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“Everything about this smells like a cheap made-for-TV,” states an opportunistic podcaster midway through the horror sequel Influencers. In the moment, his tone is manipulatively dismissive of a guest whose outlandish story he once claimed he believed. But his assessment of the events in the movie isn’t wrong. On its face, a pair of films on demand chronicling a woman who worms her way into the worlds of social media stars and then murders them feels like a modern-day version of a lurid yet cable-ready Movie of the Week. The wild thing about Influencers is just how superior it is compared to much of the competition, regardless of where you watch it. It’s the kind of thriller capable of giving its peers a serious bout of FOMO.

Revisiting the Original and Establishing the Scene

2022’s Influencer tracks the mysterious CW (Cassandra Naud) as she quietly chooses solo-traveling social media targets, lures them to their doom, and covers up those deaths (for a time) by taking control of their online accounts. 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 provides 2025's Influencers some early mystery, when returning writer-director the director resumes with CW happily living with her girlfriend Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. On a journey marking the couple’s first anniversary, British influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) draws CW's attention and anger.

CW remarks to her partner that a person ought to attempt leaving a phone-addicted online personality in a place without any devices and see if they can survive. Is this an origin-story prequel? Was CW radicalized by seeing the preferential treatment given to a single fame-seeker?

Shifting Perspectives and Global Pursuits

The story’s perspective changes multiple times, ultimately revealing those introductory moments' chronological position. Harder catches up with Madison, now exonerated for carrying out CW's offenses, yet still encounters doubt regarding her version of what happened, which includes the killing of her boyfriend. The film also follows Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), based in Bali attempting to juice his career as half of a conservative-influencer power couple alongside Ariana (Veronica Long), although his chosen platform is bro-heavy streams, as opposed to the Instagram photos that typically attract CW’s attention.

Naud remains immensely captivating in her role, a role that appears especially custom-fit for her talents. (She even created CW's eye-catching outfits.) While the follow-up's focus leans heavily into CW — the original felt more equally divided between her and Madison — it still functions as a story of rival amateur detectives, as Madison and CW both use fake accounts, Insta-stalking, and an apparently limitless travel fund to pursue or evade each other. Then again, maybe the unlimited budget aren't needed. Online personalities possess a talent for getting to explore posh places without paying much, a skill that CW echoes with her more overt scamming.

Ingenious Filmmaking and Cinematic Travelogue

The filmmakers behind Influencers appear equally ingenious about finding beautiful places to film, although they were likely more legitimate about it. The vast majority of the film seems to be shot on location, giving it an authentic gravity that lingers even as numerous sequences involve a handful of actors of characters staring at computer or phone screens.

It follows the same logic which allowed the James Bond movies look so persistently lavish for decades: Yes, big action and special effects can display a big budget, however just providing a kind of visual tour to viewers also feels deeply filmic. It’s also especially fitting for a story so dependent on the coexisting surface-level allure and desperate hustle involved in producing envy-inducing digital content.

All of the characters in Bali, similar to those staying in Thailand in the original, seem to have access to unbelievably stylish contemporary villas; films exist concerning beach rescuers which don't feature as much aerial pool footage. The characters must believably inhabit these lush, remote places to emphasize the uncomfortable paradox of how often each person — even the woman wreaking vengeance on the influencers’ self-centered phoniness — nevertheless spends plenty of time in the glow of their devices.

Balanced Depictions and Tech-Savvy Tension

At the same time, the director has not crafted a screed against the vacuousness of online fame. Though it can be satisfying to watch CW exploit various online personalities, and a sense reminiscent of Hitchcock of alignment allows us to hope she evades capture, the filmmaker is relatively understanding of the key influencer figures. In the first movie, he keyed into the isolation Madison felt during supposedly dream getaways. In this film, the director appears confident that merely watching Jacob in action will reveal that he is selling snake-oil masculinity to other gullible men; he resists caricaturing the character further. He even grants Jacob a measure of dignity by showing his genuine loyalty to his girlfriend; he is two-faced, but Ariana is a collaborator in his hypocrisy, not someone exploited of it.

The flip side of Harder’s even-keeled presentation is that it can sometimes appear as if he is acknowledging bits of modern online life without deeply exploring them. This is particularly evident regarding how he introduces artificial intelligence into the plot, an intriguing development which misses the psychological edge it should have. The pluralized title of Influencers might give fans of the first movie expectations of an Aliens-style escalation, and the film ultimately delivers exactly that, with an appropriately chaotic climax. However, initially, it resembles more a polished Alfred Hitchcock movie than a wild-eyed, tech-addled De Palma-style shocker. Influencers’ extensive use of actual places might also be what keeps it from seeming like pure nightmare fuel. Our society might be saturated with content-churning influencers, digital deception, and self-serving tourism, but reality itself is still here, at least for now.