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“Everything about this reeks like a bad made-for-TV,” remarks a cynical commentator midway through the horror sequel Influencers. In the moment, he’s being dismissive in a calculated way toward an interviewee with an outlandish story he once claimed he believed. But his description of what’s happening on screen isn’t wrong. Superficially, a pair of films on demand about a young woman who worms her way into the lives of online influencers before killing them feels like the 21st-century equivalent of a lurid but cable-ready Movie of the Week. The wild thing regarding Influencers remains how much better it is than plenty of its competition, regardless of screen size. It’s the kind of thriller capable of giving other movies a bad case of FOMO.

Revisiting the Original and Setting the Stage

The 2022 film Influencer follows the enigmatic CW (Cassandra Naud) as she methodically selects traveling alone influencer targets, entices them to their deaths, and covers up those murders (at least temporarily) by taking control of their socials. The film concludes (spoiler ahead) with CW stranded on a deserted island off the coast of Thailand, following her most recent mark, Madison (Emily Tennant), reverses their roles on her.

This lends 2025's Influencers a degree of ambiguity, when returning writer-director the director picks up with CW contentedly residing with her girlfriend Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. During a trip to celebrate the couple’s one-year anniversary, British influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) catches CW's attention and ire.

CW comments to Diane that someone ought to attempt stranding a device-obsessed influencer somewhere with no technology and see whether they can make it. Are we witnessing an origin-story prequel? Did CW become extremist by seeing the preferential treatment given to a single fame-seeker?

Shifting Perspectives and International Chases

The story’s perspective changes multiple times, ultimately revealing those introductory moments' place in the timeline. Harder catches up with Madison, now cleared of carrying out CW's offenses, but still faces doubt regarding her recounting of what happened, including the killing of Madison’s boyfriend. We also follow Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), living in Bali and trying to juice his career as part of a right-wing-influencer duo with Ariana (Veronica Long), although his preferred medium is bro-heavy streams, rather than the curated images that normally capture CW’s attention.

The actor continues to be immensely captivating in the part, a role that appears particularly tailor-made to her strengths. (She also designed CW's striking outfits.) While the sequel’s focus tips heavily toward CW — the first film felt more equally divided between her and Madison — it still works as a story of rival investigators, as Madison and CW both use fabricated profiles, social media surveillance, and an apparently unlimited travel budget to chase or evade one another. Of course, perhaps the vast resources isn’t necessary. Influencers have a talent for getting to explore posh places at little cost, a skill which CW mirrors through her more blatant scheming.

Ingenious Filmmaking and Cinematic Travelogue

The filmmakers behind Influencers appear equally ingenious about finding stunning locations to visit, although they were presumably more legitimate in their methods. The vast majority of the film seems to be shot on location, giving it an authentic gravity that lingers even when many scenes involve a handful of actors of characters staring at computer or phone screens.

It’s the same principle that made the Bond franchise appear so consistently opulent for decades: Yes, explosive action and visual effects can show off large spending, but just providing a travelogue of sorts to viewers also seems inherently cinematic. It’s also particularly appropriate for a narrative so rooted in the coexisting surface-level allure and try-hard grind involved in producing jealousy-worthy online content.

All of the characters in Bali, like those staying in Thailand in the original, seem to have access to impossibly chic modern bungalows; there are movies concerning beach rescuers which don't feature this much overhead swimming-pool video. These individuals have to convincingly occupy these luxurious, remote places to highlight the uncomfortable paradox of how often each person — even the woman wreaking vengeance upon the online stars' self-centered phoniness — nonetheless spends plenty of time under the light of their devices.

Balanced Depictions and Digital-Age Suspense

At the same time, the director has not crafted a rant targeting the emptiness of the influencer industry. Though it is gratifying to watch CW exploit different internet celebrities, and a sense reminiscent of Hitchcock of identification allows us to hope she doesn’t get caught, the filmmaker is relatively sympathetic to the key influencer figures. In the first movie, he keyed into the loneliness Madison felt during ostensibly dream getaways. Here, the director appears confident that merely watching Jacob in action will make it clear that he is selling snake-oil masculinity to other doofuses; he avoids turning into a caricature the character. He even grants Jacob a degree of respect by showing his true devotion to his girlfriend; he is two-faced, yet Ariana is a collaborator in his hypocrisy, not a victim by it.

The other side of this balanced approach means it can sometimes appear as if he’s nodding at bits of contemporary digital culture without deeply exploring them further. This is particularly evident regarding how he brings AI into the plot, an intriguing development that lacks the psychosexual kick it deserves. The pluralized title of Influencers could offer fans of the first movie hope for a larger-scale ante-upping, and the film ultimately delivers that, with a suitably wild final act. But before that, it resembles more a sleek Hitchcock thriller than a wild-eyed, technology-obsessed Brian De Palma thriller. Influencers’ heavy use of real-world locations may also be what keeps it from seeming like utter horror. The world might be saturated with always-online creators, online fraud, and self-serving tourism, but the world itself is still here, at least for now.