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“Everything about this smells like a cheap made-for-TV,” observes a cynical podcaster during the horror sequel Influencers. In the moment, his tone is dismissive in a calculated way toward an interviewee with an outlandish story he previously claimed he believed. But his description of what’s happening on screen isn't inaccurate. On its face, two films on demand about a woman who worms her way into the worlds of online influencers and then murders them feels like a modern-day version of a tawdry but cable-ready weekly TV movie. The surprising aspect about Influencers is how much better it proves to be compared to much of the competition, irrespective of where you watch it. It’s the kind of thriller capable of giving other movies a bad case of FOMO.

Recapping the Original and Establishing the Scene

The 2022 film Influencer follows the enigmatic CW (Cassandra Naud) as she methodically selects traveling alone influencer targets, entices them to their doom, and conceals those deaths (for a time) by seizing control of their socials. 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), turns the tables against her.

This lends the 2025 Influencers some early ambiguity, as returning filmmaker Kurtis David Harder resumes with CW contentedly residing with her girlfriend Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. During a trip to celebrate their first anniversary, UK-based influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) draws CW’s eye and ire.

CW comments to her partner that someone should try stranding a phone-addicted online personality in a place without any devices to see if they can survive. Are we witnessing a backstory prequel? Did CW become extremist by seeing the special treatment afforded one clout-chaser?

Evolving Viewpoints and International Chases

The story’s perspective shifts several more times, ultimately revealing those early scenes’ chronological position. The story revisits Madison, now cleared of carrying out CW's offenses, but still faces suspicion regarding her recounting of what happened, including the murder of her boyfriend. We also follow Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), living in Bali and trying to boost his profile as half of a right-wing-influencer power couple with Ariana (Veronica Long), although his chosen platform is bro-heavy streams, rather than the Instagram photos that typically capture CW’s attention.

Naud remains terrifically magnetic in her role, which seems especially custom-fit to her strengths. (She also designed CW's eye-catching outfits.) Although the sequel’s screentime balance leans heavily into CW — the first film seemed more balanced between the two women — it still functions as a story of dueling amateur detectives, with both women both use fake accounts, Insta-stalking, and an apparently unlimited travel budget to chase and/or escape one another. Then again, maybe the vast resources isn’t necessary. Online personalities possess a knack for gaining access to posh places without paying much, an ability that CW echoes through her more blatant scamming.

Ingenious Filmmaking and Visual Wanderlust

The filmmakers behind Influencers seem similarly ingenious in locating stunning locations to film, although they were presumably more legitimate in their methods. The vast majority of the film seems to be filmed in real places, providing it an authentic gravity that remains even when numerous sequences involve a relatively small cast of people staring at computer or phone screens.

It follows the same logic that made the Bond franchise appear so persistently lavish over the years: Yes, explosive action and special effects can show off large spending, however simply offering a travelogue of sorts for the audience also seems deeply filmic. It’s also especially fitting for a story so rooted in the simultaneous superficial glamour and try-hard grind of creating jealousy-worthy digital content.

All of the characters visiting Bali, like those who were in Thailand in the original, seem to have entry to impossibly chic modern bungalows; there are movies concerning beach rescuers that don’t show off this much overhead swimming-pool footage. These individuals have to convincingly inhabit these luxurious, remote places to emphasize the uneasy irony of how often each person — even the woman exacting revenge upon the online stars' narcissistic falseness — nevertheless spends plenty of time in the glow of their devices.

Nuanced Portrayals and Digital-Age Suspense

Simultaneously, the director has not crafted a rant targeting the vacuousness of the influencer industry. Though it is gratifying to watch CW manipulate different internet celebrities, and a Hitchcockian sense of identification lets us to wish she doesn’t get caught, the filmmaker is somewhat sympathetic to the key influencer figures. Previously, he keyed into the isolation Madison experienced during ostensibly dream getaways. Here, the director appears confident that just observing Jacob in action will make it clear that he’s peddling false masculinity to other doofuses; he avoids turning into a caricature the character further. He even grants Jacob a degree of respect through depicting his genuine loyalty to his girlfriend; he’s a hypocrite, but Ariana is a collaborator in his hypocrisy, not someone exploited of it.

The other side of this balanced approach is that it may occasionally seem as if he is acknowledging bits of modern online life without deeply exploring 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 fans of the first movie expectations of a larger-scale ante-upping, and the movie ultimately delivers exactly that, with a suitably wild final act. But before that, it’s more like a sleek Hitchcock thriller than a wild-eyed, technology-obsessed De Palma-style shocker. Influencers’ heavy use of actual places may also be what prevents it from coming across like pure nightmare fuel. Our society might be saturated with always-online creators, online fraud, and exploitative travel, but reality itself is still here, at least for now.