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“The entire situation smells like a cheap made-for-TV,” remarks an opportunistic commentator midway through the horror sequel Influencers. At that point, he’s being manipulatively dismissive toward an interviewee with an bizarre tale he once said he trusted. But his description of the events on screen isn't inaccurate. On its face, a pair of streaming movies chronicling a young woman who insinuates herself into the worlds of online influencers before killing them seems like the 21st-century equivalent of a tawdry but network-approved weekly TV movie. The wild thing about Influencers remains how much better it is than plenty of the competition, irrespective of screen size. It’s the kind of suspense film that should give other movies a serious bout of FOMO.

Recapping the Original and Establishing the Scene

2022’s Influencer tracks the mysterious CW (Cassandra Naud) while she quietly chooses traveling alone influencer targets, entices them to their doom, and covers up those deaths (at least temporarily) by taking control of their online accounts. The movie leaves off (spoiler ahead) with CW marooned on an uninhabited island off the coast of Thailand, after her most recent mark, Madison (Emily Tennant), reverses their roles on her.

This provides the 2025 Influencers a degree of mystery, when returning filmmaker the director resumes with the character CW happily living with her girlfriend Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. During a trip marking the couple’s one-year anniversary, British influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) catches CW's attention and ire.

CW comments to her partner that a person ought to attempt leaving a phone-addicted online personality in a place with no technology and see if they can survive. Are we witnessing an origin-story prequel? Was CW radicalized by seeing the special treatment given to one clout-chaser?

Shifting Perspectives and International Chases

The story’s perspective changes multiple times, eventually clarifying those introductory moments' place in the timeline. Harder catches up with Madison, who has been cleared of carrying out CW’s crimes, but still faces suspicion over her recounting of the events, which includes the murder of Madison’s boyfriend. We also follow Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), living in Bali and trying to juice his career as half of a right-wing-influencer power couple with Ariana (Veronica Long), though his preferred medium is bro-heavy streams, rather than the Instagram photos that typically capture CW's interest.

Naud remains terrifically magnetic in her role, which seems especially custom-fit to her strengths. (She even created CW's striking wardrobe.) While the follow-up's screentime balance leans heavily into CW — the first film felt more equally divided between her and Madison — it still works as a tale of rival investigators, as Madison and CW employ fabricated profiles, Insta-stalking, and a seemingly limitless travel fund to chase and/or escape each other. Of course, maybe the unlimited budget isn’t necessary. Influencers have a knack for gaining access to posh places without paying much, a skill which CW mirrors through her more blatant scamming.

Ingenious Filmmaking and Visual Wanderlust

The filmmakers behind Influencers appear equally ingenious about finding beautiful places to visit, though they were presumably more legitimate about it. Most of the movie seems to be filmed in real places, giving it an authentic gravity that remains even as numerous sequences involve a handful of actors of characters looking at computer or phone screens.

It follows the same logic that made the James Bond movies look so persistently lavish over the years: Indeed, explosive action and special effects can show off large spending, but simply offering a travelogue of sorts to viewers also seems deeply filmic. This is especially fitting for a narrative so dependent on the coexisting surface-level allure and desperate hustle of creating jealousy-worthy online content.

Every character in Bali, like those who were in Thailand in the first film, appear to enjoy access to impossibly chic contemporary villas; there are movies about lifeguards that don’t show off as much overhead swimming-pool footage. These individuals have to convincingly inhabit these luxurious, remote places to emphasize the uneasy irony of how frequently each person — even the woman exacting revenge on the influencers’ narcissistic falseness — nevertheless spends plenty of time in the glow of their screens.

Nuanced Portrayals and Tech-Savvy Tension

Simultaneously, Harder hasn’t authored a rant against the emptiness of online fame. Though it can be gratifying to see CW exploit different internet celebrities, 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 isolation Madison experienced while on supposedly envy-worthy vacations. Here, Harder seems to trust that just observing Jacob in action will reveal that he’s peddling snake-oil masculinity to other gullible men; he resists caricaturing the character. He even grants Jacob a measure of dignity by showing his true devotion to his girlfriend; he is two-faced, but Ariana is a partner 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’s nodding at bits of contemporary digital culture without investigating them further. This is particularly evident of the way he brings AI into the story, an intriguing development which misses the psychosexual kick it should have. The pluralized title of Influencers might give devotees of the original expectations of an Aliens-style ante-upping, and the film does eventually provide that, with a suitably wild final act. But before that, it resembles more a polished Alfred Hitchcock movie than a frenzied, tech-addled De Palma-style shocker. Influencers’ extensive use of actual places might also be what prevents it from seeming like pure nightmare fuel. The world may be overrun with content-churning influencers, online fraud, and exploitative travel, but the world itself remains present, at least for now.