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“Everything about this stinks like a cheap made-for-TV,” observes a cynical podcaster midway through the horror sequel Influencers. In the moment, he’s being dismissive in a calculated way toward an interviewee with an outlandish story he once said he trusted. But his description of the events in the movie isn’t wrong. On its face, two films on demand about a woman who insinuates herself into the worlds of social media stars and then murders them seems like the 21st-century equivalent of a lurid yet cable-ready weekly TV movie. The wild thing regarding Influencers remains how much better it is than plenty of its competition, regardless of screen size. It’s the kind of suspense film capable of giving other movies a bad case of FOMO.

Revisiting the First Film and Setting the Stage

2022’s Influencer tracks the enigmatic CW (Cassandra Naud) while she quietly chooses traveling alone social media targets, entices them to their deaths, and covers up those deaths (for a time) by seizing control of their online accounts. The film leaves off (spoiler ahead) with CW stranded on an uninhabited island near the coast of Thailand, after her most recent mark, Madison (Emily Tennant), turns the tables on her.

This provides 2025's Influencers some early mystery, when returning writer-director Kurtis David Harder picks up with the character CW happily living alongside her partner Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. During a trip marking their one-year anniversary, British influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) catches CW's attention and anger.

CW remarks to her partner that someone should try stranding a device-obsessed online personality in a place with no technology to see if they can survive. Is this a backstory prequel? Did CW become extremist after witnessing the preferential treatment given to a single fame-seeker?

Shifting Perspectives and Global Pursuits

The narrative viewpoint changes multiple times, ultimately revealing those early scenes’ place in the timeline. The story revisits Madison, who has been exonerated for committing CW's offenses, yet still encounters suspicion over her version of the events, including the killing of her boyfriend. The film also follows Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), based in Bali and trying to juice his career as part of a conservative-influencer duo alongside Ariana (Veronica Long), though his preferred medium involves masculine-focused livestreams, as opposed to the curated images that normally capture CW’s attention.

Naud remains immensely captivating in the part, which seems particularly custom-fit to her strengths. (She also designed CW's striking wardrobe.) Although the follow-up's focus leans heavily into CW — the first film seemed more balanced between her and Madison — it still functions as a tale of dueling amateur detectives, with both women both use fake accounts, Insta-stalking, and an apparently limitless travel fund to chase and/or escape one another. Of course, maybe the vast resources aren't needed. Online personalities possess a talent for gaining access to posh places without paying much, a skill that CW echoes through her more blatant scamming.

Resourceful Production and Visual Wanderlust

The filmmakers behind Influencers appear equally ingenious in locating stunning locations to film, though they were presumably more legitimate in their methods. The vast majority of the movie appears to be shot on location, providing it an authentic gravity that remains even as numerous sequences involve a handful of actors of characters staring at digital devices.

It follows the same logic which allowed the Bond franchise appear so persistently lavish for decades: Yes, explosive action and special effects can display large spending, but just providing a travelogue of sorts to viewers also seems inherently cinematic. It’s also particularly appropriate for a story so dependent on the coexisting superficial glamour and desperate hustle involved in producing jealousy-worthy online content.

All of the characters in Bali, like those staying in Thailand in the original, seem to have access to unbelievably stylish modern bungalows; there are movies about lifeguards which don't feature as much overhead swimming-pool footage. The characters must believably inhabit these luxurious, remote places to highlight the uncomfortable paradox of how often each person — including the woman exacting revenge on the influencers’ self-centered phoniness — nonetheless devotes much time under the light of their devices.

Nuanced Portrayals and Digital-Age Suspense

Simultaneously, the director has not crafted a screed targeting the emptiness of the influencer industry. Though it is satisfying to see CW manipulate various online personalities, and a Hitchcockian sense of identification allows us to wish she doesn’t get caught, the filmmaker is relatively understanding of the major influencer characters. Previously, he keyed into the loneliness Madison felt while on supposedly dream getaways. In this film, Harder seems to trust that just observing Jacob in action will reveal that he is selling snake-oil masculinity to other gullible men; he resists caricaturing the character. He even grants Jacob a degree of respect by showing his true devotion to his partner; he’s a hypocrite, but Ariana is a collaborator in his hypocrisy, not a victim of it.

The other side of Harder’s even-keeled presentation means it can sometimes appear that he’s nodding at bits of modern online life without deeply exploring them further. This is particularly evident of the way he brings AI into the story, a fascinating turn that lacks the psychological edge it deserves. The retitled sequel of Influencers could offer fans of the first movie expectations of a larger-scale ante-upping, and the film does eventually provide that, with an appropriately wild final act. But before that, it’s more like a polished Hitchcock thriller than a frenzied, technology-obsessed Brian De Palma thriller. Influencers’ extensive use of actual places may also be what keeps it from seeming like utter horror. The world may be overrun with content-churning influencers, online fraud, and self-serving tourism, but reality itself is still here, for now.