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“The entire situation smells of a bad made-for-TV,” remarks an opportunistic podcaster midway through the horror sequel Influencers. In the moment, he’s being dismissive in a calculated way of a guest whose bizarre tale he once claimed he believed. Yet his assessment of what’s happening on screen isn’t wrong. Superficially, two films on demand about a woman who worms her way into the worlds of online influencers and then murders them feels like a modern-day version of a tawdry but cable-ready Movie of the Week. The wild thing regarding Influencers remains how much better it proves to be compared to much of the competition, regardless of where you watch it. It is precisely the thriller that should give other movies a bad case of FOMO.

Recapping the First Film and Establishing the Scene

The 2022 film Influencer tracks the mysterious CW (Cassandra Naud) while she methodically selects solo-traveling social media targets, entices them to their deaths, and covers up those deaths (for a time) by seizing control of their socials. The movie concludes (spoiler ahead) with CW marooned on an uninhabited island near the coast of Thailand, following her latest target, Madison (Emily Tennant), turns the tables on her.

This provides the 2025 Influencers some early mystery, as returning filmmaker Kurtis David Harder resumes with the character CW happily living alongside her partner Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. On a journey to celebrate the couple’s one-year anniversary, UK-based influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) catches CW's attention and ire.

CW remarks to Diane that a person ought to attempt leaving a phone-addicted online personality in a place without any devices and see whether they can survive. Are we witnessing a backstory prequel? Did CW become extremist by seeing the preferential treatment afforded one clout-chaser?

Shifting Perspectives and Global Pursuits

The narrative viewpoint shifts several more times, ultimately revealing those early scenes’ place in the timeline. Harder catches up with Madison, now cleared of committing CW's offenses, yet still encounters doubt over her version of the events, which includes the killing of Madison’s boyfriend. We also follow Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), based in Bali attempting to boost his profile as half of a right-wing-influencer duo alongside Ariana (Veronica Long), although his chosen platform is bro-heavy streams, as opposed to the Instagram photos that normally attract CW's interest.

The actor continues to be immensely captivating in the part, which seems especially tailor-made to her strengths. (She even created CW's striking wardrobe.) Although the follow-up's focus 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 fake accounts, social media surveillance, and an apparently unlimited travel budget to pursue or evade each other. Of course, perhaps the vast resources isn’t necessary. Online personalities possess a talent for getting to explore posh places without paying much, an ability which CW mirrors with her more overt scamming.

Ingenious Filmmaking and Cinematic Travelogue

The creative team for Influencers appear equally ingenious in locating beautiful places to film, although they were likely less nefarious about it. Most of the film appears to be filmed in real places, giving it a real-world weight that lingers even when many scenes consist of a relatively small cast of characters staring at computer or phone screens.

It’s the same principle that made the Bond franchise look so persistently lavish for decades: Yes, big action and visual effects can display large spending, but simply offering a travelogue of sorts for the audience also feels deeply filmic. It’s also especially fitting for a story so dependent on the coexisting superficial glamour and desperate hustle of creating jealousy-worthy online content.

Every character visiting Bali, like those staying in Thailand in the first film, seem to have access to impossibly chic modern bungalows; there are movies about lifeguards which don't feature this much aerial pool video. The characters must believably inhabit these luxurious, far-flung locations to highlight the uneasy irony of how often everyone — including the woman wreaking vengeance upon the online stars' self-centered phoniness — nonetheless spends plenty of time under the light of their screens.

Nuanced Portrayals and Digital-Age Suspense

At the same time, Harder hasn’t authored a screed against the emptiness of the influencer industry. While it is gratifying to watch CW manipulate different internet celebrities, and a sense reminiscent of Hitchcock of alignment lets us to wish she doesn’t get caught, the filmmaker is relatively understanding of the major influencer characters. In the first movie, he keyed into the isolation Madison experienced while on ostensibly dream getaways. Here, Harder seems to trust that merely watching Jacob in action will reveal that he’s peddling false masculinity to other doofuses; he resists caricaturing the character further. He even gives 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 someone exploited by it.

The flip side of this balanced approach is that it can sometimes appear as if he is acknowledging elements of modern online life without investigating them further. This is particularly evident regarding how he introduces artificial intelligence into the story, an intriguing development that lacks the psychological edge it should have. The retitled sequel for the film could offer fans of the first movie hope for an Aliens-style escalation, and the film does eventually provide that, with a suitably wild final act. But before that, it resembles more a sleek Hitchcock thriller than a wild-eyed, technology-obsessed Brian De Palma thriller. Influencers’ extensive use of real-world locations might also be what keeps it from seeming like utter horror. Our society may be overrun with content-churning influencers, digital deception, and exploitative travel, but reality itself is still here, for now.