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“This whole affair stinks of a cheap made-for-TV,” states a cynical commentator during the horror sequel Influencers. In the moment, his tone is manipulatively dismissive toward an interviewee with an bizarre tale he previously said he trusted. But his description of the events on screen isn’t wrong. On its face, a pair of streaming movies about a woman who insinuates herself into the lives of online influencers and then murders them feels like the 21st-century equivalent of a tawdry but network-approved weekly TV movie. The surprising aspect about Influencers remains just how superior it is than plenty of the competition, regardless of screen size. It is precisely the thriller capable of giving other movies a bad case of FOMO.

Revisiting the First Film and Setting the Stage

The 2022 film Influencer tracks the mysterious CW (Cassandra Naud) as she methodically selects solo-traveling social media 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, after her most recent mark, Madison (Emily Tennant), turns the tables on her.

This provides 2025's Influencers some early ambiguity, as returning writer-director Kurtis David Harder resumes with the character CW contentedly residing alongside her partner Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. On a journey marking their first anniversary, British influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) catches CW's attention and ire.

CW remarks to her partner that a person should try stranding a phone-addicted online personality somewhere with no technology to see whether they can make it. Are we witnessing an origin-story prequel? Was CW radicalized after witnessing the special treatment given to one clout-chaser?

Evolving Viewpoints and International Chases

The story’s perspective shifts several more times, eventually clarifying those early scenes’ place in the timeline. The story revisits Madison, now exonerated for committing CW’s crimes, but still faces suspicion regarding her version of the events, which includes the murder of her boyfriend. We also follow Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), living in Bali attempting to boost his profile as half of a right-wing-influencer duo with Ariana (Veronica Long), although his chosen platform is bro-heavy streams, as opposed to the curated images that typically attract CW's interest.

The actor continues to be immensely captivating in her role, a role that appears especially tailor-made for her talents. (She also designed CW's eye-catching outfits.) Although the follow-up's focus leans heavily into CW — the original seemed more balanced between her and Madison — it still works as a story of rival amateur detectives, as Madison and CW employ fake accounts, Insta-stalking, and an apparently unlimited travel budget to chase and/or escape each other. Of course, perhaps the unlimited budget aren't needed. Online personalities possess a knack for getting to explore posh places at little cost, a skill which CW mirrors through her more blatant scheming.

Ingenious Filmmaking and Cinematic Travelogue

The creative team for Influencers seem similarly resourceful about finding stunning locations to visit, although they were likely more legitimate in their methods. The vast majority of the movie seems to be shot on location, giving it an authentic gravity that lingers even when numerous sequences involve a handful of actors of characters looking at digital devices.

It follows the same logic which allowed the Bond franchise appear so persistently lavish over the years: Indeed, big action and visual effects can show off a big budget, but just providing a kind of visual tour to viewers also feels deeply filmic. It’s also particularly appropriate for a narrative so dependent on the simultaneous surface-level allure and try-hard grind of creating envy-inducing digital content.

All of the characters in Bali, like those who were in Thailand in the original, seem to have entry to impossibly chic contemporary villas; there are movies concerning beach rescuers which don't feature as much aerial pool video. The characters must believably occupy these lush, remote places to highlight the uneasy irony of how often each person — even the woman wreaking vengeance on the influencers’ narcissistic falseness — nevertheless devotes much time under the light of their devices.

Balanced Depictions and Tech-Savvy Tension

Simultaneously, Harder hasn’t authored a screed against the emptiness of the influencer industry. Though it is satisfying to see CW manipulate different internet celebrities, and a sense reminiscent of Hitchcock of alignment allows us to hope she evades capture, the filmmaker is somewhat sympathetic to the major influencer characters. Previously, he keyed into the loneliness Madison experienced during supposedly dream getaways. In this film, the director appears confident that merely watching Jacob in action will reveal that he is selling false masculinity to other gullible men; he avoids caricaturing the character further. He even gives Jacob a measure of dignity through depicting his genuine loyalty to his partner; he’s a hypocrite, but Ariana is a partner in his double standards, not someone exploited by it.

The other side of this balanced approach is that it may occasionally seem that he is acknowledging elements of contemporary digital culture without investigating them. This is especially true regarding how he introduces artificial intelligence into the story, an intriguing development which misses the psychosexual kick it deserves. The pluralized title 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 chaotic climax. However, initially, it resembles more a sleek Hitchcock thriller than an wild-eyed, tech-addled Brian De Palma thriller. Influencers’ extensive use of actual places might also be what prevents it from seeming like pure nightmare fuel. Our society might be saturated with content-churning influencers, online fraud, and self-serving tourism, but the world itself is still here, at least for now.