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“The entire situation smells of a bad TV movie,” remarks an opportunistic commentator midway through the horror sequel Influencers. In the moment, he’s being manipulatively dismissive toward an interviewee whose bizarre tale he once claimed he believed. But his description of what’s happening in the movie isn’t wrong. On its face, a pair of films on demand chronicling a woman who worms her way into the worlds of online influencers before killing them seems like a modern-day version of a tawdry but cable-ready Movie of the Week. The wild thing about Influencers is how much better it is compared to much of its competition, irrespective of where you watch it. It’s the kind of thriller capable of giving its peers a serious bout of FOMO.

Revisiting the Original and Setting the Stage

2022’s Influencer follows the enigmatic CW (Cassandra Naud) as she methodically selects solo-traveling social media targets, lures them to their doom, and covers up those deaths (at least temporarily) by taking control of their online accounts. The movie concludes (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 2025's Influencers a degree of mystery, when returning writer-director the director resumes with CW happily living alongside her partner Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. During a trip marking the couple’s one-year anniversary, UK-based influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) draws CW’s eye and ire.

CW comments to her partner that a person should try leaving a device-obsessed influencer somewhere with no technology and see if they can survive. Is this an origin-story prequel? Was CW radicalized by seeing the special treatment afforded a single fame-seeker?

Evolving Viewpoints and International Chases

The story’s perspective changes multiple times, ultimately revealing those early scenes’ place in the timeline. Harder catches up with Madison, now cleared of committing CW's offenses, but still faces suspicion over her recounting of the events, which includes the murder of Madison’s boyfriend. We also follow Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), based in Bali and trying to juice his career as half of a conservative-influencer power couple alongside Ariana (Veronica Long), though his chosen platform is bro-heavy streams, rather than the curated images that normally attract CW's interest.

The actor continues to be terrifically magnetic in the part, a role that appears especially custom-fit for her talents. (She even created CW's striking wardrobe.) While the follow-up's screentime balance leans heavily into CW — the original felt more equally divided between her and Madison — it still works as a tale of rival amateur detectives, as Madison and CW both use fabricated profiles, social media surveillance, and an apparently limitless travel fund to chase or evade one another. Of course, maybe the vast resources isn’t necessary. Influencers have a talent for getting to explore posh places without paying much, an ability that CW echoes with her more overt scheming.

Resourceful Production and Cinematic Travelogue

The creative team for Influencers appear equally ingenious about finding beautiful places to visit, though they were likely more legitimate in their methods. Most of the film appears to be shot on location, providing it an authentic gravity that lingers even as many scenes involve a relatively small cast of characters staring at digital devices.

It follows the same logic that made the Bond franchise look so consistently opulent for decades: Indeed, big action and special effects can show off a big budget, but simply offering a kind of visual tour for the audience also seems inherently cinematic. This is especially fitting for a story so rooted in the simultaneous surface-level allure and desperate hustle involved in producing jealousy-worthy online content.

All of the characters visiting Bali, like those staying in Thailand in the original, appear to enjoy entry to impossibly chic modern bungalows; there are movies about lifeguards that don’t show off as much overhead swimming-pool video. The characters have to convincingly occupy these luxurious, far-flung locations to highlight the uneasy irony of how frequently each person — even the woman exacting revenge upon the online stars' self-centered phoniness — nevertheless spends plenty of time under the light of their devices.

Balanced Depictions and Digital-Age Suspense

At the same time, the director has not crafted a rant targeting the vacuousness of the influencer industry. While it can be gratifying to watch CW manipulate various online personalities, and a Hitchcockian sense of identification lets us to wish she evades capture, the filmmaker is relatively understanding of the key influencer figures. In the first movie, he keyed into the isolation Madison felt while on ostensibly dream getaways. Here, the director appears confident that merely watching Jacob in action will make it clear that he’s peddling snake-oil masculinity to other gullible men; he resists caricaturing the character further. He even gives Jacob a measure of dignity through depicting his genuine loyalty to his partner; he is two-faced, yet Ariana is a partner in his double standards, not someone exploited by it.

The other side of this balanced approach is that it can sometimes appear as if he is acknowledging elements of contemporary digital culture without deeply exploring them further. This is especially true regarding how he brings AI into the plot, a fascinating turn that lacks the psychosexual kick it deserves. The pluralized title for the film might give devotees of the original hope for a larger-scale ante-upping, and the movie does eventually provide exactly that, with a suitably wild final act. But before that, it resembles more a sleek Hitchcock thriller than an frenzied, technology-obsessed De Palma-style shocker. Influencers’ extensive use of real-world locations may also be what prevents it from seeming like utter horror. The world may be overrun with always-online creators, digital deception, and exploitative travel, but reality itself is still here, at least for now.