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“Everything about this stinks like a bad TV movie,” observes an opportunistic commentator during the horror sequel Influencers. At that point, he’s being dismissive in a calculated way toward an interviewee with an bizarre tale he previously said he trusted. Yet his assessment of what’s happening on screen isn't inaccurate. On its face, a pair of films on demand about a woman who worms her way into the lives of social media stars and then murders them seems like a modern-day version of a tawdry yet cable-ready Movie of the Week. The surprising aspect regarding Influencers is just how superior it proves to be than plenty of the competition, regardless of where you watch it. It’s the kind of thriller that should give other movies a bad case of FOMO.

Revisiting the Original and Setting the Stage

The 2022 film Influencer follows the enigmatic CW (Cassandra Naud) while she quietly chooses traveling alone social media targets, entices them to their deaths, and covers up those murders (for a time) by seizing control of their online accounts. 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), reverses their roles against her.

This lends the 2025 Influencers a degree of mystery, as returning writer-director Kurtis David Harder resumes with the character CW contentedly residing alongside her partner Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. During a trip marking the couple’s first anniversary, British influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) draws CW's attention and anger.

CW remarks to her partner that someone ought to attempt leaving a phone-addicted online personality in a place with no technology to see whether they can make it. Are we witnessing a backstory prequel? Was CW radicalized by seeing the preferential treatment afforded a single clout-chaser?

Shifting Perspectives and International Chases

The narrative viewpoint shifts several more times, eventually clarifying those introductory moments' chronological position. The story revisits Madison, now exonerated for committing CW’s crimes, but still faces suspicion regarding her version of what happened, which includes the murder of Madison’s boyfriend. The film also follows Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), living in Bali and trying to juice his career as half of a right-wing-influencer duo with Ariana (Veronica Long), though his chosen platform involves masculine-focused livestreams, as opposed to the curated images that normally capture CW’s attention.

The actor continues to be terrifically magnetic in her role, a role that appears especially tailor-made to her strengths. (She also designed CW's eye-catching wardrobe.) Although the follow-up's screentime balance tips heavily toward CW — the original seemed more balanced between the two women — it still works as a tale of rival investigators, with both women both use fabricated profiles, social media surveillance, and an apparently unlimited travel budget to chase and/or escape each other. Of course, maybe the unlimited budget isn’t necessary. Influencers have a talent for gaining access to luxurious locales at little cost, a skill that CW echoes with her more overt scamming.

Ingenious Filmmaking and Cinematic Travelogue

The filmmakers behind Influencers appear equally ingenious in locating stunning locations to film, although they were presumably less nefarious about it. The vast majority of the film appears to be shot on location, providing it an authentic gravity that lingers even as many scenes involve a relatively small cast of characters staring at computer or phone screens.

It’s the same principle which allowed the Bond franchise look so persistently lavish over the years: Indeed, big action and special effects can show off large spending, however simply offering a travelogue of sorts to viewers also feels deeply filmic. It’s also particularly appropriate for a narrative so rooted in the coexisting surface-level allure and try-hard grind involved in producing envy-inducing online content.

All of the characters visiting Bali, like those staying in Thailand in the first film, appear to enjoy access to unbelievably stylish contemporary villas; films exist concerning beach rescuers that don’t show off this much aerial pool footage. The characters must believably inhabit these lush, far-flung locations to highlight the uncomfortable paradox of how frequently everyone — including the woman wreaking vengeance upon the online stars' self-centered phoniness — nevertheless devotes much time in the glow of their screens.

Nuanced Portrayals and Digital-Age Suspense

At the same time, the director has not crafted a rant against the emptiness of the influencer industry. While it can be satisfying to see CW exploit different internet celebrities, and a Hitchcockian sense of alignment lets us to wish she doesn’t get caught, the filmmaker is relatively sympathetic to the major influencer characters. Previously, he keyed 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’s peddling false masculinity to other doofuses; he avoids caricaturing the character further. He even grants Jacob a degree of respect by showing his genuine loyalty to his girlfriend; 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 is that it can sometimes appear that he is acknowledging elements of contemporary digital culture without deeply exploring them. This is especially true of the way he introduces artificial intelligence into the plot, an intriguing development that lacks the psychosexual kick it deserves. The pluralized title of Influencers might give fans of the first movie expectations of a larger-scale escalation, and the film ultimately delivers that, with a suitably wild final act. But before that, it’s more like a polished Hitchcock thriller than a frenzied, technology-obsessed De Palma-style shocker. Influencers’ extensive use of real-world locations might also be what prevents it from coming across like pure nightmare fuel. Our society may be overrun with content-churning influencers, online fraud, and self-serving tourism, but the world itself is still here, at least for now.