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“This whole affair smells of a bad made-for-TV,” observes a cynical commentator during the horror sequel Influencers. At that point, he’s being dismissive in a calculated way of a guest with an bizarre tale he once claimed he believed. But his assessment of what’s happening on screen isn’t wrong. On its face, two streaming movies chronicling a woman who insinuates herself into the lives of social media stars before killing them feels like a modern-day version of a tawdry yet cable-ready Movie of the Week. The surprising aspect about Influencers is how much better it proves to be than plenty of its competition, regardless of where you watch it. It is precisely the thriller that should give its peers a serious bout of FOMO.

Revisiting the Original and Setting the Stage

The 2022 film Influencer tracks the enigmatic CW (Cassandra Naud) while she quietly chooses solo-traveling social media targets, lures them to their doom, and covers up those murders (for a time) by taking control of their socials. The movie concludes (spoiler ahead) with CW marooned on an uninhabited 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 mystery, as returning filmmaker Kurtis David Harder resumes with CW happily living alongside her partner Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. During a trip to celebrate their one-year anniversary, British influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) draws CW’s eye and anger.

CW comments to her partner that someone ought to attempt stranding a phone-addicted influencer somewhere with no technology to see whether they can make it. Are we witnessing a backstory prequel? Did CW become extremist by seeing the preferential treatment afforded a single clout-chaser?

Evolving Viewpoints and Global Pursuits

The story’s perspective shifts several more times, eventually clarifying those early scenes’ chronological position. The story revisits Madison, now exonerated for carrying out CW's offenses, but still faces suspicion regarding her recounting of what happened, including the killing of her boyfriend. The film also follows Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), based in Bali and trying to boost his profile as part of a right-wing-influencer duo with Ariana (Veronica Long), though his chosen platform is bro-heavy streams, rather than the curated images that typically attract CW's interest.

Naud remains terrifically magnetic in her role, a role that appears particularly custom-fit to her strengths. (She even created CW's eye-catching wardrobe.) While the follow-up's focus leans heavily into CW — the original felt more equally divided between her and Madison — it still works as a story of dueling investigators, as Madison and CW employ fake accounts, Insta-stalking, and a seemingly limitless travel fund to pursue and/or escape each other. Then again, perhaps the vast resources aren't needed. Influencers have a talent for gaining access to posh places at little cost, a skill which CW mirrors with her more overt scamming.

Ingenious Filmmaking and Visual Wanderlust

The filmmakers behind Influencers appear equally resourceful about finding stunning locations to film, though they were likely more legitimate about it. The vast majority of the film appears to be shot on location, giving it a real-world weight that remains even when many scenes consist of a handful of actors of characters looking at computer or phone screens.

It follows the same logic that made the Bond franchise look so persistently lavish over the years: Indeed, explosive action and special effects can display a big budget, but just providing a kind of visual tour for the audience also feels inherently cinematic. It’s also especially fitting for a narrative so rooted in the coexisting superficial glamour and desperate hustle involved in producing envy-inducing 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 modern bungalows; films exist about lifeguards that don’t show off this much aerial pool footage. These individuals must believably inhabit these lush, far-flung locations to highlight the uneasy irony of how frequently each person — even the woman wreaking vengeance upon the online stars' self-centered phoniness — nonetheless devotes much time in the glow of their screens.

Nuanced Portrayals and Digital-Age Suspense

Simultaneously, Harder hasn’t authored a screed against the emptiness of online fame. Though it can be satisfying to see CW manipulate different internet celebrities, and a Hitchcockian sense of alignment lets us to hope she doesn’t get caught, Harder is relatively understanding of the key influencer figures. In the first movie, he keyed into the loneliness Madison felt while on ostensibly envy-worthy vacations. In this film, Harder seems to trust that just observing Jacob in action will reveal that he’s peddling false masculinity to other doofuses; he avoids turning into a caricature the character. He even gives Jacob a degree of respect by showing his true devotion to his girlfriend; he is two-faced, yet Ariana is a collaborator in his double standards, not a victim by it.

The other side of Harder’s even-keeled presentation is that it can sometimes appear that he is acknowledging bits of modern online life without investigating them. This is especially true regarding how he brings AI into the story, an intriguing development which misses the psychosexual kick it should have. The pluralized title for the film could offer fans of the first movie hope for a larger-scale ante-upping, and the movie ultimately delivers that, with an appropriately chaotic climax. But before that, it’s more like a polished Hitchcock thriller than a frenzied, tech-addled Brian De Palma thriller. Influencers’ heavy use of real-world locations may also be what prevents it from coming across like utter horror. The world may be overrun with always-online creators, online fraud, and self-serving tourism, but reality itself is still here, for now.