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“Everything about this reeks like a bad TV movie,” observes a cynical podcaster midway through the horror sequel Influencers. At that point, he’s being manipulatively dismissive of a guest with an bizarre tale he previously claimed he believed. Yet his assessment of the events on screen isn't inaccurate. Superficially, two streaming movies about a woman who worms her way into the lives of online influencers before killing them seems like the 21st-century equivalent of a tawdry but cable-ready weekly TV movie. The wild thing about Influencers is just how superior it proves to be than plenty of its competition, regardless of where you watch it. It’s the kind of thriller that should give its peers a serious bout of FOMO.

Revisiting the Original and Setting the Stage

2022’s Influencer tracks the enigmatic CW (Cassandra Naud) while she quietly chooses traveling alone social media targets, lures them to their doom, and covers up those murders (for a time) by seizing control of their online accounts. The movie leaves off (spoiler ahead) with CW stranded on a deserted island off the coast of Thailand, after her latest target, Madison (Emily Tennant), turns the tables against her.

This provides the 2025 Influencers some early mystery, when returning writer-director the director resumes with the character CW happily living with her girlfriend Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. On a journey marking the couple’s one-year anniversary, British influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) catches CW’s eye and ire.

CW comments to Diane that a person ought to attempt stranding a phone-addicted influencer in a place without any devices to see whether they can survive. Is this a backstory prequel? Was CW radicalized after witnessing the special treatment afforded a single clout-chaser?

Shifting Perspectives and Global Pursuits

The story’s perspective changes multiple times, eventually clarifying those early scenes’ chronological position. The story revisits Madison, who has been cleared of committing CW’s crimes, yet still encounters doubt over her recounting of what happened, including the killing of her boyfriend. The film also follows Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), living in Bali attempting to juice his career as part of a right-wing-influencer power couple alongside Ariana (Veronica Long), although his preferred medium involves masculine-focused livestreams, as opposed to the curated images that typically capture CW’s attention.

Naud remains immensely captivating in the part, which seems particularly custom-fit for her talents. (She even created CW's striking wardrobe.) While the sequel’s screentime balance tips heavily toward CW — the first film seemed more balanced between her and Madison — it still functions as a tale of dueling investigators, with both women employ fake accounts, Insta-stalking, and a seemingly unlimited travel budget to pursue and/or escape one another. Then again, maybe the vast resources aren't needed. Online personalities possess a knack for gaining access to posh places without paying much, an ability which CW mirrors through her more blatant scamming.

Ingenious Filmmaking and Cinematic Travelogue

The creative team for Influencers seem similarly resourceful about finding stunning locations to visit, although they were presumably more legitimate about it. The vast majority of the movie seems to be filmed in real places, giving it an authentic gravity that lingers even when numerous sequences consist of a handful of actors of characters staring at digital devices.

It’s the same principle that made the Bond franchise look so persistently lavish for decades: Yes, big action and special effects can show off a big budget, however simply offering a travelogue of sorts to viewers also seems deeply filmic. It’s also especially fitting for a narrative so dependent on the coexisting superficial glamour and desperate hustle of creating envy-inducing online content.

Every character visiting Bali, like those staying in Thailand in the original, appear to enjoy entry to unbelievably stylish contemporary villas; there are movies concerning beach rescuers which don't feature as much overhead swimming-pool video. These individuals must believably occupy these lush, remote places to highlight the uncomfortable paradox of how frequently everyone — including the woman wreaking vengeance on the influencers’ narcissistic falseness — nevertheless spends plenty of time under the light of their screens.

Nuanced Portrayals and Digital-Age Suspense

At the same time, the director has not crafted a screed targeting the vacuousness of the influencer industry. While it is gratifying to see CW manipulate various online personalities, and a sense reminiscent of Hitchcock of alignment lets us to hope she evades capture, Harder is somewhat understanding of the key influencer figures. In the first movie, he keyed into the isolation Madison felt while on supposedly envy-worthy vacations. Here, the director appears confident that merely watching Jacob in action will make it clear that he’s peddling false masculinity to other doofuses; he avoids caricaturing the character. He even grants Jacob a degree of respect by showing his true devotion to his girlfriend; he’s a hypocrite, yet Ariana is a collaborator in his hypocrisy, not someone exploited by it.

The flip side of this balanced approach is that it can sometimes appear as if he’s nodding at bits of contemporary digital culture without investigating them. This is particularly evident regarding how he introduces artificial intelligence into the story, an intriguing development that lacks the psychosexual kick it should have. The pluralized title of Influencers might give devotees of the original expectations of a larger-scale ante-upping, and the film ultimately delivers exactly that, with an appropriately chaotic climax. But before that, it resembles more a sleek Alfred Hitchcock movie than an wild-eyed, technology-obsessed Brian De Palma thriller. Influencers’ extensive use of actual places might also be what keeps it from coming across like pure nightmare fuel. The world may be overrun with content-churning influencers, online fraud, and exploitative travel, but the world itself remains present, for now.