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“Everything about this smells of a bad made-for-TV,” states an opportunistic commentator during the horror sequel Influencers. At that point, he’s being manipulatively dismissive toward an interviewee whose bizarre tale he once claimed he believed. Yet his assessment of what’s happening in the movie isn't inaccurate. On its face, two streaming movies chronicling a woman who insinuates herself into the worlds of online influencers and then murders them seems like a modern-day version of a lurid but cable-ready Movie of the Week. The wild thing regarding Influencers remains just how superior it proves to be than plenty of its competition, irrespective of where you watch it. It is precisely the suspense film capable of giving its peers a serious bout of FOMO.

Revisiting the Original and Setting the Stage

The 2022 film Influencer tracks the enigmatic CW (Cassandra Naud) as she methodically selects solo-traveling social media targets, lures them to their deaths, and covers up those deaths (at least temporarily) by seizing control of their online accounts. The film leaves off (spoiler ahead) with CW marooned on an uninhabited island off the coast of Thailand, following her latest target, Madison (Emily Tennant), reverses their roles against her.

This lends the 2025 Influencers some early mystery, when returning writer-director the director picks up with the character CW contentedly residing with her girlfriend Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. On a journey marking the couple’s one-year anniversary, British influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) draws CW's attention and ire.

CW remarks to Diane that someone ought to attempt leaving a phone-addicted online personality somewhere with no technology and see whether they can survive. Is this an origin-story prequel? Was CW radicalized after witnessing the preferential treatment given to a single clout-chaser?

Shifting Perspectives and Global Pursuits

The narrative viewpoint shifts several more times, eventually clarifying those early scenes’ chronological position. The story revisits Madison, who has been exonerated for committing CW's offenses, yet still encounters suspicion over her version of what happened, including the killing of Madison’s boyfriend. The film also follows Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), living in Bali and trying to juice his career as half of a right-wing-influencer duo with Ariana (Veronica Long), though his chosen platform is bro-heavy streams, rather than the Instagram photos that normally attract CW’s attention.

The actor continues to be terrifically magnetic in the part, which seems particularly tailor-made for her talents. (She also designed CW's striking wardrobe.) Although the sequel’s screentime balance leans heavily into CW — the original felt more equally divided between the two women — it still functions as a story of rival investigators, as Madison and CW both use fabricated profiles, Insta-stalking, and a seemingly unlimited travel budget to pursue and/or escape one another. Of course, maybe the vast resources aren't needed. Influencers have a knack for getting to explore posh places without paying much, an ability which CW mirrors with her more overt scamming.

Resourceful Production and Visual Wanderlust

The creative team for Influencers appear equally resourceful about finding stunning locations to film, though they were likely less nefarious about it. The vast majority of the movie seems to be shot on location, providing it an authentic gravity that lingers even when numerous sequences involve a handful of actors of people staring at computer or phone screens.

It’s the same principle that made the James Bond movies appear so consistently opulent over the years: Yes, explosive action and special effects can display a big budget, but simply offering a kind of visual tour to viewers also seems inherently cinematic. It’s also especially fitting for a story so rooted in the coexisting surface-level allure and desperate hustle of creating envy-inducing online content.

Every character visiting Bali, like those staying in Thailand in the original, appear to enjoy access to impossibly chic contemporary villas; films exist concerning beach rescuers which don't feature as much aerial pool footage. These individuals have to convincingly inhabit these lush, remote places to emphasize the uneasy irony of how frequently each person — including the woman wreaking vengeance upon the online stars' narcissistic falseness — nonetheless spends plenty of time in the glow of their screens.

Balanced Depictions and Digital-Age Suspense

Simultaneously, Harder hasn’t authored a rant against the emptiness of online fame. While it can be gratifying to see CW manipulate different internet celebrities, and a sense reminiscent of Hitchcock of alignment allows us to wish she evades capture, the filmmaker is somewhat understanding of the major influencer characters. In the first movie, he tapped into the loneliness Madison felt during supposedly dream getaways. Here, Harder seems to trust that merely watching Jacob in action will make it clear that he is selling snake-oil masculinity to other gullible men; he avoids caricaturing the character further. He even grants Jacob a degree of respect through depicting his true devotion to his partner; he’s a hypocrite, but Ariana is a collaborator in his double standards, not a victim of it.

The other side of this balanced approach means it can sometimes appear as if he is acknowledging elements of contemporary digital culture without deeply exploring them further. This is particularly evident regarding how he introduces artificial intelligence into the story, an intriguing development which misses the psychological edge it should have. The retitled sequel for the film could offer devotees of the original hope for a larger-scale escalation, and the movie does eventually provide that, with an appropriately chaotic climax. But before that, it resembles more a sleek Alfred Hitchcock movie than an wild-eyed, tech-addled Brian De Palma thriller. Influencers’ extensive use of real-world locations may also be what keeps it from coming across like pure nightmare fuel. The world might be saturated with always-online creators, online fraud, and self-serving tourism, but reality itself remains present, for now.