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“This whole affair stinks of a bad TV movie,” observes a cynical podcaster during the horror sequel Influencers. In the moment, his tone is manipulatively dismissive toward an interviewee with an bizarre tale he once claimed he believed. Yet his assessment of what’s happening on screen isn't inaccurate. On its face, two streaming movies chronicling a woman who insinuates herself into the worlds of social media stars and then murders them feels like the 21st-century equivalent of a lurid but network-approved weekly TV movie. The surprising aspect about Influencers is just how superior it proves to be than plenty of its competition, regardless of where you watch it. It is precisely the thriller capable of giving its peers a bad case of FOMO.

Revisiting the Original and Establishing the Scene

2022’s Influencer follows the mysterious CW (Cassandra Naud) as she quietly chooses traveling alone social media targets, lures them to their doom, and conceals those murders (at least temporarily) by taking control of their socials. The movie concludes (spoiler ahead) with CW marooned on a deserted 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 ambiguity, as returning writer-director the director picks up 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) draws CW's attention and anger.

CW remarks to her partner that a person should try stranding a device-obsessed influencer somewhere without any devices to see if they can make it. Is this a backstory prequel? Did CW become extremist after witnessing the special treatment afforded a single clout-chaser?

Shifting Perspectives and Global Pursuits

The story’s perspective shifts several more times, eventually clarifying those introductory moments' place in the timeline. The story revisits Madison, now exonerated for carrying out CW's offenses, yet still encounters doubt over her recounting of the events, including the killing of Madison’s boyfriend. We also follow Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), based in Bali attempting to boost his profile as part of a right-wing-influencer power couple alongside Ariana (Veronica Long), though his chosen platform involves masculine-focused livestreams, as opposed to the curated images that normally attract CW’s attention.

Naud remains immensely captivating in the part, a role that appears especially tailor-made for her talents. (She also designed CW's striking wardrobe.) Although the sequel’s screentime balance leans heavily into CW — the first film seemed more balanced between the two women — it still works as a story of dueling amateur detectives, with both women both use fabricated profiles, social media surveillance, and a seemingly limitless travel fund to pursue and/or escape each other. Of course, maybe the unlimited budget isn’t necessary. Online personalities possess a knack for getting to explore luxurious locales without paying much, a skill that CW echoes through her more blatant scheming.

Resourceful Production and Visual Wanderlust

The filmmakers behind Influencers seem similarly ingenious in locating beautiful places to film, although they were likely less nefarious about it. The vast majority of the movie appears to be shot on location, providing it an authentic gravity that lingers even as many scenes consist of a relatively small cast of people looking at digital devices.

It’s the same principle which allowed the Bond franchise look so consistently opulent for decades: Indeed, big action and visual effects can show off large spending, but just providing a kind of visual tour for the audience also feels inherently cinematic. It’s also especially fitting for a narrative so rooted in the coexisting superficial glamour and try-hard grind involved in producing jealousy-worthy digital content.

Every character in Bali, similar to those who were in Thailand in the original, appear to enjoy access to unbelievably stylish contemporary villas; films exist concerning beach rescuers that don’t show off this much overhead swimming-pool footage. The characters have to convincingly occupy these lush, remote places to highlight the uncomfortable paradox of how often everyone — including the woman exacting revenge on the influencers’ self-centered phoniness — nonetheless 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 online fame. While it is gratifying to see CW exploit various online personalities, and a Hitchcockian sense of alignment lets us to hope she doesn’t get caught, the filmmaker is relatively sympathetic to the major influencer characters. Previously, he tapped into the isolation Madison felt during supposedly envy-worthy vacations. In this film, the director appears confident that just observing Jacob in action will reveal that he is selling snake-oil masculinity to other gullible men; he avoids turning into a caricature the character further. 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 hypocrisy, not someone exploited by it.

The flip side of Harder’s even-keeled presentation is that it may occasionally seem as if he is acknowledging elements of modern online life without deeply exploring them further. This is especially true regarding how he brings AI into the plot, an intriguing development which misses the psychological edge it deserves. The pluralized title of Influencers might give fans of the first movie expectations of an Aliens-style escalation, and the film does eventually provide that, with a suitably chaotic climax. 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 real-world locations may also be what keeps it from seeming like pure nightmare fuel. Our society might be saturated with always-online creators, digital deception, and exploitative travel, but the world itself is still here, at least for now.