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“The entire situation reeks of a cheap TV movie,” observes an opportunistic podcaster during the horror sequel Influencers. In the moment, his tone is dismissive in a calculated way of a guest whose outlandish story he once claimed he believed. Yet his description of what’s happening in the movie isn't inaccurate. Superficially, two streaming movies chronicling a young woman who insinuates herself into the worlds of online influencers and then murders them seems like a modern-day version of a lurid but cable-ready weekly TV movie. The wild thing regarding Influencers remains how much better it proves to be than plenty of its competition, irrespective of where you watch it. It is precisely the thriller that should give other movies a serious bout of FOMO.

Revisiting the Original and Setting the Stage

2022’s Influencer follows the enigmatic CW (Cassandra Naud) while she quietly chooses solo-traveling influencer targets, entices them to their deaths, and conceals those murders (at least temporarily) by taking control of their online accounts. The film concludes (spoiler ahead) with CW marooned on an uninhabited island off the coast of Thailand, following her most recent mark, Madison (Emily Tennant), turns the tables against her.

This provides the 2025 Influencers a degree of ambiguity, when returning filmmaker the director picks up with CW contentedly residing with her girlfriend Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. On a journey to celebrate their one-year anniversary, UK-based influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) draws CW’s eye and anger.

CW comments to Diane that someone should try stranding a device-obsessed online personality somewhere with no technology to see if they can survive. Is this an origin-story prequel? Was CW radicalized after witnessing the special treatment given to one fame-seeker?

Evolving Viewpoints and International Chases

The narrative viewpoint changes multiple times, eventually clarifying those introductory moments' place in the timeline. The story revisits Madison, now exonerated for committing CW’s crimes, but still faces doubt over her recounting of what happened, which includes the murder of her boyfriend. We also follow Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), living in Bali and trying to juice his career as half of a conservative-influencer power couple alongside Ariana (Veronica Long), though his chosen platform is bro-heavy streams, rather than the curated images that typically capture CW’s attention.

The actor continues to be terrifically magnetic in the part, a role that appears especially tailor-made to her strengths. (She even created CW's eye-catching outfits.) While the follow-up's screentime balance tips heavily toward CW — the original seemed more balanced between the two women — it still functions as a story of rival investigators, as Madison and CW employ fake accounts, Insta-stalking, and a seemingly unlimited travel budget to chase and/or escape each other. Then again, maybe the vast resources aren't needed. Influencers have a knack for getting to explore luxurious locales without paying much, an ability which CW mirrors with her more overt scheming.

Ingenious Filmmaking and Visual Wanderlust

The filmmakers behind Influencers seem similarly ingenious in locating beautiful places to visit, although they were presumably less nefarious about it. Most of the movie appears to be shot on location, giving it a real-world weight that remains even when many scenes consist of a handful of actors of people staring at digital devices.

It follows the same logic which allowed the Bond franchise look so persistently lavish over the years: Indeed, big action and special effects can display large spending, however simply offering a travelogue of sorts for the audience also seems deeply filmic. This is particularly appropriate for a story so rooted in the simultaneous superficial glamour and try-hard grind of creating envy-inducing online content.

Every character visiting Bali, like those who were in Thailand in the original, seem to have access to unbelievably stylish modern bungalows; there are movies about lifeguards that don’t show off this much aerial pool video. These individuals have to convincingly occupy these luxurious, far-flung locations to emphasize the uneasy irony of how often each person — including the woman wreaking vengeance upon the online stars' narcissistic falseness — nonetheless spends plenty of time in the glow of their screens.

Nuanced Portrayals and Digital-Age Suspense

Simultaneously, the director has not crafted a rant targeting the emptiness of online fame. While it can be gratifying to watch CW manipulate different internet celebrities, and a Hitchcockian sense of alignment allows us to wish she evades capture, Harder is somewhat understanding of the major influencer characters. In the first movie, he keyed into the loneliness Madison experienced during supposedly dream getaways. In this film, Harder seems to trust that merely watching Jacob in action will reveal that he’s peddling false masculinity to other doofuses; he resists turning into a caricature the character. He even gives Jacob a measure of dignity by showing his genuine loyalty to his partner; he is two-faced, yet Ariana is a partner in his double standards, not someone exploited of it.

The flip side of Harder’s even-keeled presentation is that it may occasionally seem as if he is acknowledging bits of modern online life without investigating them further. This is especially true of the way he introduces artificial intelligence into the story, a fascinating turn that lacks the psychosexual kick it should have. The pluralized title for the film might give fans of the first movie hope for a larger-scale escalation, and the movie ultimately delivers exactly that, with a suitably wild final act. But before that, it’s more like a sleek Alfred Hitchcock movie than a frenzied, tech-addled De Palma-style shocker. Influencers’ heavy use of real-world locations might also be what keeps it from coming across like utter horror. Our society might be saturated with content-churning influencers, digital deception, and self-serving tourism, but the world itself is still here, for now.