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“This whole affair reeks like a bad TV movie,” observes an opportunistic podcaster during the horror sequel Influencers. At that point, he’s being dismissive in a calculated way toward an interviewee with an outlandish story he previously said he trusted. Yet his assessment of the events in the movie isn’t wrong. 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 network-approved weekly TV movie. The wild thing about Influencers remains just how superior it is compared to much of its competition, irrespective of where you watch it. It’s the kind of thriller that should give other movies a bad case of FOMO.

Revisiting the Original and Setting the Stage

2022’s Influencer follows the enigmatic CW (Cassandra Naud) while she methodically selects traveling alone social media targets, entices them to their doom, and covers up those deaths (at least temporarily) by seizing control of their online accounts. 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), reverses their roles against her.

This provides the 2025 Influencers a degree of mystery, as returning writer-director Kurtis David Harder resumes with the character CW happily living alongside her partner Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. On a journey marking their one-year anniversary, UK-based influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) catches CW's attention and anger.

CW remarks to Diane that a person should try leaving a phone-addicted online personality in a place without any devices and see if they can make it. Is this a backstory prequel? Was CW radicalized after witnessing the special treatment afforded one clout-chaser?

Shifting Perspectives and Global Pursuits

The story’s perspective shifts several more times, ultimately revealing those introductory moments' chronological position. Harder catches up with Madison, who has been cleared of committing CW's offenses, but still faces doubt over her recounting of what happened, which includes the killing of Madison’s boyfriend. We also follow 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 involves masculine-focused livestreams, rather than the curated images that normally attract CW’s attention.

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 eye-catching wardrobe.) While the follow-up's focus tips heavily toward CW — the original felt more equally divided between the two women — it still works as a tale of rival investigators, as Madison and CW both use fake accounts, social media surveillance, and a seemingly unlimited travel budget to chase or evade each other. Of course, maybe the unlimited budget isn’t necessary. Influencers have a talent for gaining access to posh places without paying much, a skill which CW mirrors with her more overt scheming.

Resourceful Production and Cinematic Travelogue

The filmmakers behind Influencers appear equally resourceful about finding stunning locations to film, although they were presumably more legitimate in their methods. The vast majority of the movie seems to be shot on location, giving it a real-world weight that remains even when many scenes consist of a relatively small cast of people looking at computer or phone screens.

It follows the same logic that made the Bond franchise look so persistently lavish for decades: Indeed, big action and visual effects can show off a big budget, however simply offering a kind of visual tour for the audience also seems inherently cinematic. This is particularly appropriate for a story so rooted in the simultaneous superficial glamour and desperate hustle of creating jealousy-worthy digital content.

All of the characters visiting Bali, like those who were in Thailand in the first film, seem to have access to unbelievably stylish contemporary villas; films exist concerning beach rescuers that don’t show off as much aerial pool footage. The characters have to convincingly occupy these lush, remote places to highlight the uneasy irony of how often each person — even the woman wreaking vengeance upon the online stars' narcissistic falseness — nonetheless spends plenty of time under the light of their devices.

Nuanced Portrayals and Tech-Savvy Tension

Simultaneously, the director has not crafted a screed targeting the emptiness of online fame. While it is gratifying to see CW exploit different internet celebrities, and a sense reminiscent of Hitchcock of identification allows us to hope she doesn’t get caught, Harder is relatively sympathetic to the key influencer figures. In the first movie, he keyed into the isolation Madison experienced during ostensibly dream getaways. In this film, Harder seems to trust that merely watching Jacob at work will make it clear that he is selling false masculinity to other gullible men; he resists turning into a caricature the character further. He even grants Jacob a measure of dignity through depicting his true devotion to his partner; he is two-faced, yet Ariana is a collaborator in his double standards, not someone exploited by it.

The flip side of Harder’s even-keeled presentation is that it can sometimes appear that he’s nodding at elements of modern online life without deeply exploring them. This is especially true of the way he introduces artificial intelligence into the plot, an intriguing development that lacks the psychosexual kick it should have. The pluralized title of Influencers could offer fans of the first movie hope for an Aliens-style ante-upping, and the movie does eventually provide that, with a suitably chaotic climax. But before that, it’s more like a sleek Hitchcock thriller than an frenzied, tech-addled Brian De Palma thriller. Influencers’ heavy use of real-world locations may also be what keeps it from coming across like utter horror. Our society might be saturated with always-online creators, digital deception, and exploitative travel, but reality itself remains present, at least for now.