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“Everything about this reeks like a bad made-for-TV,” remarks an opportunistic podcaster during the horror sequel Influencers. In the moment, he’s being dismissive in a calculated way of a guest with an bizarre tale he once said he trusted. Yet his assessment of what’s happening on screen isn't inaccurate. Superficially, a pair of films on demand chronicling a young woman who worms her way into the worlds of social media stars before killing them seems like a modern-day version of a lurid but cable-ready Movie of the Week. The wild thing about Influencers is how much better it proves to be compared to much of its competition, regardless of screen size. It’s the kind of suspense film that should give its peers a serious bout of FOMO.

Revisiting the Original and Establishing the Scene

The 2022 film Influencer follows the mysterious CW (Cassandra Naud) while she methodically selects traveling alone social media targets, entices them to their doom, and covers up those murders (for a time) by seizing control of their socials. The film leaves off (spoiler ahead) with CW marooned on a deserted island near the coast of Thailand, after her most recent mark, Madison (Emily Tennant), reverses their roles on her.

This lends the 2025 Influencers a degree of ambiguity, when returning filmmaker Kurtis David Harder picks up with the character CW happily living with her girlfriend Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. During a trip marking the couple’s first anniversary, UK-based influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) catches CW’s eye and anger.

CW comments to Diane that a person should try stranding a phone-addicted influencer somewhere without any devices to see whether they can make it. Is this an origin-story prequel? Was CW radicalized by seeing the preferential treatment afforded one clout-chaser?

Shifting Perspectives and International Chases

The story’s perspective shifts several more times, eventually clarifying those early scenes’ place in the timeline. The story revisits Madison, now exonerated for carrying out CW's offenses, but still faces suspicion regarding her recounting of the events, including the killing of Madison’s boyfriend. We also follow Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), living in Bali attempting to juice his career as part of a conservative-influencer duo with Ariana (Veronica Long), though his chosen platform is bro-heavy streams, as opposed to the Instagram photos that normally capture CW’s attention.

The actor continues to be immensely captivating in her role, a role that appears especially tailor-made to her strengths. (She also designed CW's striking wardrobe.) Although the follow-up's focus tips heavily toward CW — the first film felt more equally divided between the two women — it still works as a tale of rival amateur detectives, as Madison and CW both use fake accounts, Insta-stalking, and an apparently limitless travel fund to chase and/or escape each other. Then again, maybe the unlimited budget aren't needed. Influencers have a knack for getting to explore posh places at little cost, an ability which CW mirrors with her more overt scheming.

Resourceful Production and Cinematic Travelogue

The filmmakers behind Influencers seem similarly ingenious about finding beautiful places to film, though they were likely more legitimate in their methods. The vast majority of the film appears to be shot on location, providing it an authentic gravity that remains even as numerous sequences consist of a relatively small cast of characters looking at digital devices.

It follows the same logic which allowed the James Bond movies appear so consistently opulent for decades: Indeed, big action and special effects can display a big budget, however simply offering a travelogue of sorts to viewers also seems deeply filmic. It’s also particularly appropriate for a story so rooted in the simultaneous surface-level allure and try-hard grind of creating jealousy-worthy digital content.

Every character in Bali, similar to those who were in Thailand in the original, appear to enjoy access to impossibly chic contemporary villas; films exist concerning beach rescuers which don't feature this much overhead swimming-pool footage. The characters have to convincingly inhabit these luxurious, remote places to highlight the uncomfortable paradox of how often each person — even the woman wreaking vengeance on the influencers’ narcissistic falseness — nevertheless devotes much time under the light of their screens.

Balanced Depictions and Tech-Savvy Tension

At the same time, the director has not crafted a rant against the vacuousness of the influencer industry. Though it can be gratifying to see CW exploit various online personalities, and a sense reminiscent of Hitchcock of alignment lets us to wish she evades capture, Harder is relatively understanding of the key influencer figures. In the first movie, he tapped into the loneliness Madison experienced during ostensibly dream getaways. In this film, Harder seems to trust that just observing Jacob at work will make it clear that he’s peddling false masculinity to other gullible men; he resists caricaturing the character further. He even grants Jacob a degree of respect by showing his genuine loyalty to his partner; he’s a hypocrite, but Ariana is a partner in his double standards, not someone exploited by it.

The other side of Harder’s even-keeled presentation means it may occasionally seem that he’s nodding at elements of modern online life without investigating them. This is especially true of the way he introduces artificial intelligence into the story, a fascinating turn which misses the psychosexual kick it should have. The pluralized title for the film could offer fans of the first movie hope for an Aliens-style ante-upping, and the film ultimately delivers that, with an appropriately chaotic climax. However, initially, it resembles more a sleek Alfred Hitchcock movie than an frenzied, technology-obsessed De Palma-style shocker. Influencers’ extensive use of actual places might also be what keeps it from seeming like utter horror. The world may be overrun with content-churning influencers, online fraud, and exploitative travel, but the world itself is still here, for now.