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“This whole affair smells of a cheap made-for-TV,” observes an opportunistic podcaster midway through the horror sequel Influencers. In the moment, his tone is dismissive in a calculated way of a guest whose outlandish story he previously said he trusted. Yet his description of the events in the movie isn't inaccurate. On its face, a pair of streaming movies chronicling a young woman who insinuates herself into the worlds of online influencers before killing them seems like a modern-day version of a tawdry yet network-approved weekly TV movie. The wild thing about Influencers remains how much better it is than plenty of the competition, irrespective of screen size. It is precisely the suspense film that should give other movies a bad case of FOMO.

Revisiting the Original and Setting the Stage

2022’s Influencer tracks the enigmatic CW (Cassandra Naud) as she methodically selects traveling alone influencer targets, entices them to their deaths, and covers up those murders (for a time) by taking control of their online accounts. The movie concludes (spoiler ahead) with CW stranded on a deserted island near the coast of Thailand, following her latest target, Madison (Emily Tennant), reverses their roles against her.

This provides 2025's Influencers some early mystery, as returning filmmaker Kurtis David Harder picks up with the character CW happily living alongside her partner Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. During a trip to celebrate the couple’s first anniversary, UK-based influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) draws CW’s eye and anger.

CW remarks to Diane that someone should try leaving a phone-addicted online personality in a place with no technology and see whether they can survive. Are we witnessing an origin-story prequel? Did CW become extremist after witnessing the special treatment afforded one fame-seeker?

Evolving Viewpoints and Global Pursuits

The narrative viewpoint shifts several more times, ultimately revealing those introductory moments' place in the timeline. The story revisits Madison, who has been exonerated for committing CW's offenses, yet still encounters doubt over her version of the events, 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 right-wing-influencer power couple with Ariana (Veronica Long), though his preferred medium involves masculine-focused livestreams, rather than the curated images that typically attract CW's interest.

The actor continues to be terrifically magnetic in the part, a role that appears particularly custom-fit for her talents. (She also designed CW's striking wardrobe.) Although the follow-up's focus leans heavily into CW — the first film seemed more balanced between the two women — it still functions as a story of rival amateur detectives, with both women employ fake accounts, Insta-stalking, and a seemingly unlimited travel budget to pursue or evade each other. Then again, maybe the vast resources aren't needed. Influencers have a knack for getting to explore posh places at little cost, a skill which CW mirrors through her more blatant scheming.

Resourceful Production and Cinematic Travelogue

The creative team for Influencers seem similarly ingenious about finding beautiful places to film, although they were likely less nefarious about it. Most of the movie seems to be filmed in real places, providing it a real-world weight that lingers even when many scenes involve a relatively small cast of people looking at digital devices.

It’s the same principle which allowed the Bond franchise appear so consistently opulent over the years: Indeed, big action and special effects can display large spending, but just providing a travelogue of sorts to viewers also feels deeply filmic. This is especially fitting for a story so dependent on the simultaneous surface-level allure and desperate hustle involved in producing jealousy-worthy online content.

All of the characters visiting Bali, similar to those staying in Thailand in the first film, appear to enjoy entry to unbelievably stylish modern bungalows; films exist about lifeguards which don't feature this much aerial pool footage. The characters must believably inhabit these luxurious, remote places to emphasize the uneasy irony of how often each person — even the woman exacting revenge upon the online stars' narcissistic falseness — nevertheless spends plenty of time in the glow of their devices.

Nuanced Portrayals and Digital-Age Suspense

At the same time, Harder hasn’t authored a screed against the emptiness of online fame. Though it can be satisfying to see CW exploit different internet celebrities, and a sense reminiscent of Hitchcock of alignment lets us to wish she doesn’t get caught, the filmmaker is somewhat understanding of the major influencer characters. In the first movie, he keyed into the loneliness Madison felt during supposedly envy-worthy vacations. In this film, the director appears confident that just observing Jacob at work will make it clear that he is selling false masculinity to other gullible men; he resists caricaturing the character. He even grants Jacob a measure of dignity through depicting his true devotion to his girlfriend; he’s a hypocrite, but Ariana is a partner in his hypocrisy, not a victim of it.

The flip side of Harder’s even-keeled presentation is that it can sometimes appear as if he is acknowledging elements of modern online life without investigating them. This is especially true of the way he brings AI into the plot, an intriguing development that lacks the psychosexual kick it should have. The retitled sequel of Influencers might give devotees of the original expectations of a larger-scale ante-upping, and the film ultimately delivers exactly that, with an appropriately wild final act. However, initially, it’s more like a polished Alfred Hitchcock movie than an frenzied, tech-addled De Palma-style shocker. Influencers’ heavy use of actual places may also be what prevents it from seeming like pure nightmare fuel. Our society might be saturated with content-churning influencers, digital deception, and self-serving tourism, but reality itself is still here, for now.