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“The entire situation smells like a bad made-for-TV,” states a cynical podcaster during the horror sequel Influencers. In the moment, his tone is manipulatively dismissive toward an interviewee with an bizarre tale he previously said he trusted. Yet his description of the events on screen isn't inaccurate. On its face, two streaming movies about a young woman who worms her way into the lives of social media stars before killing them seems like the 21st-century equivalent of a tawdry but cable-ready Movie of the Week. The wild thing about Influencers is just how superior it is compared to much of its competition, regardless of screen size. It is precisely the thriller capable of giving its peers a serious bout of FOMO.

Revisiting the Original and Setting the Stage

2022’s Influencer follows the mysterious CW (Cassandra Naud) as she quietly chooses traveling alone social media targets, lures them to their deaths, and covers up those murders (for a time) by seizing control of their socials. The movie leaves off (spoiler ahead) with CW marooned on a deserted island near the coast of Thailand, following her latest target, Madison (Emily Tennant), reverses their roles on her.

This lends the 2025 Influencers a degree of ambiguity, as returning filmmaker the director picks up with CW happily living alongside her partner Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. On a journey to celebrate the couple’s one-year anniversary, British influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) draws CW's attention and anger.

CW comments to her partner that someone should try leaving a phone-addicted influencer in a place with no technology to see if they can survive. Are we witnessing a backstory prequel? Did CW become extremist after witnessing the preferential treatment afforded a single fame-seeker?

Evolving Viewpoints and International Chases

The story’s perspective shifts several more times, ultimately revealing those introductory moments' place in the timeline. Harder catches up with Madison, now cleared of committing CW’s crimes, yet still encounters doubt over her version of the events, including the killing of Madison’s boyfriend. The film also follows Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), living in Bali attempting to juice his career as half of a conservative-influencer power couple with Ariana (Veronica Long), though his preferred medium is bro-heavy streams, rather than the Instagram photos that normally attract CW's interest.

Naud remains terrifically magnetic in the part, a role that appears particularly tailor-made to her strengths. (She also designed 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 tale of dueling amateur detectives, as Madison and CW employ fabricated profiles, Insta-stalking, and an apparently unlimited travel budget to pursue and/or escape one another. Of course, perhaps the unlimited budget aren't needed. Influencers have a knack for getting to explore luxurious locales at little cost, an ability that CW echoes through her more blatant scheming.

Resourceful Production and Visual Wanderlust

The creative team for Influencers seem similarly resourceful in locating beautiful places to film, though they were presumably more legitimate about it. The vast majority of the film seems to be shot on location, providing it a real-world weight that remains even when many scenes consist of a relatively small cast of people staring at computer or phone screens.

It’s the same principle which allowed the James Bond movies look so consistently opulent over the years: Indeed, big action and visual effects can display a big budget, however simply offering a travelogue of sorts for the audience also seems inherently cinematic. It’s also especially fitting for a narrative so rooted in the simultaneous superficial glamour and try-hard grind of creating jealousy-worthy online content.

Every character visiting Bali, like those who were in Thailand in the original, appear to enjoy access to unbelievably stylish modern bungalows; there are movies about lifeguards which don't feature this much overhead swimming-pool video. The characters have to convincingly inhabit these luxurious, far-flung locations to emphasize the uneasy irony of how frequently everyone — including the woman wreaking vengeance on the influencers’ self-centered phoniness — nevertheless spends plenty of time under the light of their screens.

Nuanced Portrayals and Tech-Savvy Tension

Simultaneously, Harder hasn’t authored a rant against the vacuousness of the influencer industry. While it can be satisfying to see CW exploit different internet celebrities, and a sense reminiscent of Hitchcock of identification allows us to wish she doesn’t get caught, Harder is somewhat sympathetic to the major influencer characters. In the first movie, he keyed into the loneliness Madison felt during supposedly dream getaways. Here, the director appears confident that merely watching Jacob at work will make it clear that he’s peddling false masculinity to other doofuses; he resists caricaturing 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 partner in his hypocrisy, not a victim by it.

The other side of this balanced approach means it can sometimes appear that he’s nodding at bits of contemporary digital culture without investigating them further. This is especially true of the way he brings AI into the plot, a fascinating turn that lacks the psychological edge it deserves. The retitled sequel for the film could offer devotees of the original expectations of an Aliens-style escalation, and the movie ultimately delivers exactly that, with a suitably wild final act. However, initially, it’s more like a sleek Hitchcock thriller than a wild-eyed, tech-addled De Palma-style shocker. Influencers’ extensive 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, online fraud, and exploitative travel, but reality itself is still here, at least for now.