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“This whole affair smells of a cheap made-for-TV,” observes a cynical commentator during the horror sequel Influencers. At that point, his tone is manipulatively dismissive of a guest whose bizarre tale he previously claimed he believed. Yet his assessment of what’s happening in the movie isn't inaccurate. Superficially, a pair of streaming movies chronicling a young woman who worms her way into the worlds of online influencers before killing them seems like a modern-day version of a lurid yet cable-ready weekly TV movie. The wild thing regarding Influencers is just how superior it is than plenty of the competition, irrespective of where you watch it. It’s the kind of suspense film capable of giving its peers 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 quietly chooses traveling alone social media targets, lures them to their deaths, and conceals those deaths (at least temporarily) by seizing control of their socials. The movie concludes (spoiler ahead) with CW stranded on an uninhabited island off the coast of Thailand, after her latest target, Madison (Emily Tennant), turns the tables against her.

This lends 2025's Influencers a degree of 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 marking the couple’s one-year anniversary, British influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) catches CW's attention and anger.

CW comments to her partner that a person should try stranding a phone-addicted influencer somewhere with no technology and see whether they can survive. Are we witnessing a backstory prequel? Did CW become extremist by seeing the special treatment given to a single clout-chaser?

Evolving Viewpoints and Global Pursuits

The narrative viewpoint changes multiple times, eventually clarifying those introductory moments' place in the timeline. The story revisits Madison, now exonerated for carrying out CW’s crimes, yet still encounters doubt regarding her version of what happened, which includes the murder of her boyfriend. The film also follows Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), living in Bali attempting to juice his career as half of a conservative-influencer duo alongside Ariana (Veronica Long), although his preferred medium is bro-heavy streams, as opposed to the curated images that normally attract CW’s attention.

Naud remains immensely captivating in her role, a role that appears especially custom-fit for her talents. (She even created CW's striking outfits.) While the follow-up's focus tips heavily toward CW — the first film felt more equally divided between her and Madison — it still functions as a story of rival amateur detectives, with both women both use fake accounts, social media surveillance, and an apparently unlimited travel budget to pursue or evade one another. Then again, maybe the unlimited budget isn’t necessary. Influencers have a talent for getting to explore posh places at little cost, an ability which CW mirrors through her more blatant scheming.

Resourceful Production and Cinematic Travelogue

The creative team for Influencers appear equally resourceful in locating stunning locations to visit, although they were likely less nefarious in their methods. Most of the film seems to be shot on location, giving it a real-world weight that lingers even as numerous sequences consist of a relatively small cast of people looking at computer or phone screens.

It’s the same principle that made the Bond franchise appear so persistently lavish for decades: Indeed, explosive action and special effects can show off a big budget, but just providing a kind of visual tour for the audience also feels inherently cinematic. This is especially fitting for a story so dependent on the simultaneous surface-level allure and try-hard grind of creating jealousy-worthy digital content.

Every character visiting Bali, like those staying in Thailand in the original, seem to have access to unbelievably stylish modern bungalows; there are movies about lifeguards that don’t show off this much overhead swimming-pool video. The characters must believably inhabit these lush, far-flung locations to emphasize the uncomfortable paradox of how often each person — including the woman wreaking vengeance on the influencers’ narcissistic falseness — nevertheless spends plenty of time in the glow of their screens.

Nuanced Portrayals and Digital-Age Suspense

At the same time, Harder hasn’t authored a rant against the vacuousness of the influencer industry. While it can be satisfying to watch CW exploit different internet celebrities, and a Hitchcockian sense of identification lets us to wish she evades capture, the filmmaker is somewhat sympathetic to the major influencer characters. In the first movie, he keyed into the isolation Madison experienced during supposedly dream getaways. Here, the director appears confident that just observing Jacob in action will make it clear that he is selling snake-oil masculinity to other gullible men; he resists caricaturing the character further. He even gives Jacob a degree of respect by showing his genuine loyalty to his girlfriend; he is two-faced, but Ariana is a collaborator in his hypocrisy, not someone exploited by it.

The flip side of Harder’s even-keeled presentation means it may occasionally seem that he’s nodding at elements of modern online life without deeply exploring them. This is especially true of the way he brings AI into the story, an intriguing development which misses the psychosexual kick it deserves. The retitled sequel for the film might give fans of the first movie hope for a larger-scale ante-upping, and the movie does eventually provide exactly that, with a suitably wild final act. But before that, it’s more like a polished Alfred Hitchcock movie than an frenzied, tech-addled De Palma-style shocker. Influencers’ heavy use of real-world locations may also be what prevents it from seeming like pure nightmare fuel. Our society may be overrun with always-online creators, digital deception, and self-serving tourism, but the world itself is still here, for now.