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“Everything about this smells like a bad made-for-TV,” states a cynical commentator during the horror sequel Influencers. In the moment, his tone is dismissive in a calculated way toward an interviewee whose outlandish story he previously claimed he believed. But his description of what’s happening in the movie isn’t wrong. Superficially, a pair of films on demand about a young woman who worms her way into the lives of social media stars and then murders them seems like a modern-day version of a tawdry yet network-approved weekly TV movie. The wild thing regarding Influencers is how much better it is than plenty of its competition, irrespective of screen size. It is precisely the thriller that should give other movies a bad case of FOMO.

Recapping the Original and Setting the Stage

The 2022 film Influencer follows the enigmatic CW (Cassandra Naud) while she quietly chooses traveling alone influencer targets, lures them to their doom, and conceals those murders (for a time) by taking control of their socials. The movie leaves off (spoiler ahead) with CW stranded on a deserted island off the coast of Thailand, following her most recent mark, Madison (Emily Tennant), turns the tables on her.

This provides 2025's 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 their one-year anniversary, British influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) catches CW’s eye and ire.

CW comments to Diane that a person ought to attempt stranding a phone-addicted influencer in a place with no technology and see if they can make it. Are we witnessing an origin-story prequel? Did CW become extremist after witnessing the special treatment given to one clout-chaser?

Evolving Viewpoints and International Chases

The story’s perspective changes multiple times, eventually clarifying those introductory moments' chronological position. The story revisits Madison, who has been cleared of committing CW’s crimes, yet still encounters suspicion regarding her version of the events, which includes the murder of her boyfriend. We also follow Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), living in Bali attempting to juice his career as half of a right-wing-influencer power couple alongside Ariana (Veronica Long), though his chosen platform is bro-heavy streams, as opposed to the curated images that typically capture CW's interest.

Naud remains immensely captivating in the part, which seems especially tailor-made for her talents. (She also designed CW's eye-catching outfits.) While the sequel’s screentime balance tips heavily toward CW — the original seemed more balanced between her and Madison — it still functions as a story of dueling investigators, with both women employ fake accounts, Insta-stalking, and an apparently limitless travel fund to chase and/or escape one another. Of course, maybe the vast resources isn’t necessary. Online personalities possess a knack for getting to explore luxurious locales at little cost, an ability that CW echoes with her more overt scheming.

Ingenious Filmmaking and Visual Wanderlust

The filmmakers behind Influencers seem similarly ingenious in locating beautiful places to film, though they were likely more legitimate about it. The vast majority of the movie appears to be filmed in real places, giving it a real-world weight that remains even as many scenes consist of a relatively small cast of characters staring at computer or phone screens.

It’s the same principle which allowed the James Bond movies appear so consistently opulent for decades: Yes, big action and visual effects can display large spending, however just providing a kind of visual tour for the audience also feels deeply filmic. It’s also particularly appropriate for a story so rooted in the simultaneous superficial glamour and try-hard grind of creating envy-inducing online content.

All of the characters in Bali, like those who were in Thailand in the original, seem to have entry to unbelievably stylish contemporary villas; there are movies about lifeguards which don't feature this much overhead swimming-pool video. The characters have to convincingly occupy these luxurious, far-flung locations to emphasize the uneasy irony of how often each person — including the woman exacting revenge on the influencers’ self-centered phoniness — nevertheless devotes much time under the light of their devices.

Nuanced Portrayals and Tech-Savvy Tension

Simultaneously, the director has not crafted a screed targeting the vacuousness of the influencer industry. Though it is gratifying to see CW manipulate different internet celebrities, and a sense reminiscent of Hitchcock of alignment lets us to wish she evades capture, Harder is relatively understanding of the major influencer characters. Previously, he tapped into the isolation Madison experienced while on ostensibly dream getaways. Here, the director appears confident that merely watching Jacob at work will reveal that he is selling false masculinity to other doofuses; he avoids caricaturing the character. He even gives Jacob a measure of dignity by showing his genuine loyalty to his partner; he’s a hypocrite, yet Ariana is a collaborator in his double standards, not someone exploited of it.

The flip side of this balanced approach is that it can sometimes appear as if he is acknowledging elements of modern online life without investigating them further. This is particularly evident of the way he introduces artificial intelligence into the plot, an intriguing development which misses the psychosexual kick it should have. The pluralized title for the film might give fans of the first movie hope for an Aliens-style ante-upping, and the film does eventually provide exactly that, with an appropriately chaotic climax. But before that, it resembles more a polished Hitchcock thriller than an wild-eyed, tech-addled Brian De Palma thriller. Influencers’ heavy use of real-world locations might also be what keeps it from seeming like utter horror. The world might be saturated with content-churning influencers, digital deception, and self-serving tourism, but reality itself remains present, at least for now.