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“The entire situation stinks of a bad TV movie,” states an opportunistic podcaster during the horror sequel Influencers. At that point, he’s being manipulatively dismissive of a guest with an outlandish story he once said he trusted. Yet his assessment of what’s happening in the movie isn't inaccurate. On its face, two streaming movies chronicling a young woman who insinuates herself into the worlds of online influencers before killing them seems like the 21st-century equivalent of a tawdry yet cable-ready Movie of the Week. The wild thing regarding Influencers is how much better it proves to be than plenty of the competition, regardless of screen size. It is precisely the thriller capable of giving its peers a serious bout of FOMO.

Recapping the Original and Establishing the Scene

The 2022 film Influencer follows the enigmatic CW (Cassandra Naud) as she quietly chooses traveling alone social media targets, lures 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 a deserted island near the coast of Thailand, after her most recent mark, Madison (Emily Tennant), turns the tables on her.

This provides the 2025 Influencers a degree of ambiguity, as returning writer-director Kurtis David Harder resumes with CW happily living with her girlfriend Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. During a trip to celebrate their one-year anniversary, UK-based influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) catches CW’s eye and ire.

CW comments to Diane that a person should try leaving a device-obsessed influencer in a place without any devices to see whether they can make it. Are we witnessing an origin-story prequel? Was CW radicalized after witnessing the preferential treatment afforded a single fame-seeker?

Evolving Viewpoints and Global Pursuits

The narrative viewpoint shifts several more times, eventually clarifying those introductory moments' chronological position. Harder catches up with Madison, who has been exonerated for carrying out CW's offenses, yet still encounters doubt regarding her version of the events, which includes the killing of her boyfriend. We also follow Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), living in Bali and trying to boost his profile as part of a right-wing-influencer power couple with Ariana (Veronica Long), though his chosen platform is bro-heavy streams, as opposed to the curated images that typically capture CW's interest.

Naud remains immensely captivating in her role, a role that appears especially tailor-made to her strengths. (She also designed CW's eye-catching outfits.) Although the follow-up's screentime balance tips heavily toward CW — the first film seemed more balanced between the two women — it still functions as a story of dueling investigators, with both women employ fabricated profiles, Insta-stalking, and a seemingly unlimited travel budget to chase or evade each other. Then again, maybe the unlimited budget isn’t necessary. Online personalities possess a knack for gaining access to posh places at little cost, an ability which CW mirrors through her more blatant scheming.

Ingenious Filmmaking and Visual Wanderlust

The creative team for Influencers appear equally resourceful in locating stunning locations to film, though they were presumably less nefarious about it. The vast majority of the movie seems to be shot on location, giving it a real-world weight that lingers even when numerous sequences consist of a handful of actors of characters looking at digital devices.

It’s the same principle which allowed the James Bond movies appear so consistently opulent for decades: Indeed, big action and special effects can show off large spending, however simply offering a kind of visual tour for the audience also seems deeply filmic. This is particularly appropriate for a narrative so dependent on the coexisting surface-level allure and desperate hustle of creating envy-inducing online content.

Every character visiting Bali, similar to those staying in Thailand in the original, appear to enjoy entry to impossibly chic modern bungalows; films exist concerning beach rescuers that don’t show off this much aerial pool video. The characters must believably occupy these lush, remote places to emphasize the uncomfortable paradox of how often each person — even the woman exacting revenge upon the online stars' self-centered phoniness — nonetheless devotes much time under the light of their devices.

Balanced Depictions and Tech-Savvy Tension

At the same time, Harder hasn’t authored a rant against the emptiness of the influencer industry. While it can be satisfying to see CW exploit different internet celebrities, and a sense reminiscent of Hitchcock of alignment lets us to hope she doesn’t get caught, the filmmaker is relatively sympathetic to the key influencer figures. Previously, he keyed into the isolation Madison felt while on supposedly envy-worthy vacations. Here, Harder seems to trust that just observing Jacob in action will reveal that he is selling snake-oil masculinity to other gullible men; he avoids turning into a caricature the character. He even gives Jacob a measure of dignity through depicting his genuine loyalty to his girlfriend; he’s a hypocrite, yet Ariana is a collaborator in his hypocrisy, not someone exploited of it.

The flip side of this balanced approach is that it can sometimes appear that he is acknowledging bits of modern online life without investigating them. This is especially true of the way he introduces artificial intelligence into the plot, a fascinating turn that lacks the psychosexual kick it deserves. The pluralized title for the film could offer devotees of the original expectations of an Aliens-style escalation, and the movie does eventually provide exactly that, with an appropriately chaotic climax. But before that, it resembles more a sleek Hitchcock thriller than an wild-eyed, technology-obsessed Brian De Palma thriller. Influencers’ extensive use of actual places might also be what keeps it from coming across like utter horror. The world might be saturated with always-online creators, digital deception, and exploitative travel, but the world itself remains present, for now.