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“The entire situation smells of a cheap made-for-TV,” states a cynical podcaster midway through the horror sequel Influencers. At that point, he’s being manipulatively dismissive of a guest whose outlandish story he previously claimed he believed. Yet his description of what’s happening on screen isn’t wrong. On its face, a pair of films on demand chronicling a woman who worms her way into the worlds of online influencers and then murders them feels like a modern-day version of a lurid yet network-approved Movie of the Week. The wild thing regarding Influencers remains how much better it is compared to much of the competition, irrespective of where you watch it. It is precisely the suspense film that should give other movies a bad case of FOMO.

Revisiting the Original and Setting the Stage

The 2022 film Influencer tracks the enigmatic CW (Cassandra Naud) while she methodically selects traveling alone influencer targets, lures them to their deaths, and covers up those deaths (for a time) by taking control of their socials. The film leaves off (spoiler ahead) with CW stranded on an uninhabited island off the coast of Thailand, following her most recent mark, Madison (Emily Tennant), turns the tables on her.

This lends 2025's Influencers some early ambiguity, as returning filmmaker Kurtis David Harder picks up with the character CW happily living alongside her partner Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. On a journey to celebrate their first anniversary, British influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) draws CW’s eye and anger.

CW remarks to her partner that a person should try stranding a phone-addicted online personality in a place with no technology to see whether they can survive. Are we witnessing a backstory prequel? Did CW become extremist after witnessing the preferential treatment given to one fame-seeker?

Evolving Viewpoints and International Chases

The story’s perspective changes multiple times, eventually clarifying those introductory moments' chronological position. The story revisits Madison, now exonerated for carrying out CW’s crimes, yet still encounters doubt over her version of what happened, including the killing of her boyfriend. The film also follows Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), living in Bali attempting to juice his career as half of a right-wing-influencer power couple with Ariana (Veronica Long), though his chosen platform involves masculine-focused livestreams, as opposed to the Instagram photos that normally attract CW’s attention.

Naud remains terrifically magnetic in her role, which seems especially custom-fit to her strengths. (She even created CW's eye-catching outfits.) Although the sequel’s screentime balance leans heavily into CW — the original felt more equally divided between her and Madison — it still functions as a story of dueling investigators, as Madison and CW both use fabricated profiles, social media surveillance, and a seemingly unlimited travel budget to chase and/or escape one another. Then again, maybe the vast resources isn’t necessary. Influencers have a talent for getting to explore posh places at little cost, a skill which CW mirrors with her more overt scheming.

Ingenious Filmmaking and Visual Wanderlust

The creative team for Influencers seem similarly resourceful in locating stunning locations to film, though they were likely more legitimate about it. Most of the film seems to be shot on location, giving it a real-world weight that lingers even as numerous sequences involve a handful of actors of characters staring at computer or phone screens.

It follows the same logic that made the James Bond movies look so persistently lavish over the years: Yes, explosive action and special effects can show off a big budget, however simply offering a kind of visual tour to viewers also seems deeply filmic. This is especially fitting for a story so rooted in the coexisting superficial glamour and try-hard grind of creating envy-inducing online content.

All of the characters visiting Bali, similar to those staying 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 video. These individuals have to convincingly occupy these lush, far-flung locations to emphasize the uncomfortable paradox of how frequently everyone — even the woman exacting revenge upon the online stars' self-centered phoniness — nonetheless devotes much time in the glow of their devices.

Nuanced Portrayals and Digital-Age Suspense

Simultaneously, the director has not crafted a screed targeting the vacuousness of the influencer industry. While it is satisfying to see CW manipulate various online personalities, and a sense reminiscent of Hitchcock of alignment lets us to hope she doesn’t get caught, Harder is somewhat sympathetic to the key influencer figures. Previously, he tapped into the isolation Madison experienced during ostensibly envy-worthy vacations. In this film, the director appears confident that merely watching Jacob in action will reveal that he’s peddling snake-oil masculinity to other gullible men; he avoids caricaturing the character further. He even gives Jacob a degree of respect by showing his true devotion to his partner; he is two-faced, yet Ariana is a collaborator in his hypocrisy, not a victim of it.

The other side of this balanced approach means it can sometimes appear that he’s nodding at elements of modern online life without deeply exploring them further. This is especially true of the way he introduces artificial intelligence into the story, a fascinating turn which misses the psychological edge it should have. The pluralized title of Influencers might give fans of the first movie hope for an Aliens-style escalation, and the movie does eventually provide that, with a suitably wild final act. However, initially, it’s more like a polished Hitchcock thriller than a frenzied, tech-addled Brian De Palma thriller. Influencers’ heavy use of actual places might also be what keeps it from coming across like pure nightmare fuel. Our society might be saturated with content-churning influencers, digital deception, and exploitative travel, but reality itself is still here, at least for now.