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“The entire situation smells like a bad TV movie,” observes a cynical podcaster midway through the chilling follow-up Influencers. At that point, he’s being manipulatively dismissive of a guest with an outlandish story he previously said he trusted. Yet his assessment of what’s happening in the movie isn't inaccurate. Superficially, a pair of streaming movies about a young woman who worms her way into the lives of online influencers before killing them feels like a modern-day version of a lurid 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 screen size. It is precisely the suspense film capable of giving other movies a bad case of FOMO.

Revisiting the Original and Setting the Stage

2022’s Influencer tracks the mysterious CW (Cassandra Naud) while she methodically selects solo-traveling social media targets, lures them to their deaths, and covers up those murders (for a time) by seizing control of their online accounts. The film 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 against her.

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

CW remarks to her partner that a person ought to attempt leaving a device-obsessed online personality in a place with no technology and see if they can make it. Are we witnessing a backstory prequel? Did CW become extremist after witnessing the special treatment given to a single fame-seeker?

Evolving Viewpoints and Global Pursuits

The story’s perspective shifts several more times, eventually clarifying those introductory moments' place in the timeline. Harder catches up with Madison, now exonerated for carrying out CW's offenses, but still faces doubt over her version of the events, which includes the killing of her boyfriend. The film also follows Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), living in Bali attempting to juice his career as part of a conservative-influencer duo with Ariana (Veronica Long), though his preferred medium involves masculine-focused livestreams, as opposed to the Instagram photos 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 outfits.) While the sequel’s screentime balance leans heavily into CW — the first film felt more equally divided between her and Madison — it still works as a tale of dueling investigators, with both women employ fabricated profiles, social media surveillance, and a seemingly unlimited travel budget to chase and/or escape one another. Then again, maybe the unlimited budget aren't needed. Online personalities possess a talent for getting to explore posh places without paying much, a skill which CW mirrors with her more overt scheming.

Resourceful Production and Cinematic Travelogue

The creative team for Influencers seem similarly resourceful about finding beautiful places to film, though they were presumably more legitimate in their methods. The vast majority of the movie seems to be shot on location, providing it a real-world weight that remains even as many scenes involve a relatively small cast of characters looking at computer or phone screens.

It’s the same principle which allowed the Bond franchise look so consistently opulent over the years: Indeed, explosive action and special effects can display a big budget, however just providing a travelogue of sorts to viewers also seems inherently cinematic. It’s also particularly appropriate for a story so rooted in the simultaneous superficial glamour and try-hard grind of creating jealousy-worthy digital content.

Every character visiting Bali, similar to those who were in Thailand in the first film, seem to have entry to impossibly chic modern bungalows; films exist concerning beach rescuers which don't feature this much aerial pool footage. The characters have to convincingly inhabit these luxurious, remote places to highlight the uncomfortable paradox of how frequently each person — including the woman exacting revenge upon the online stars' self-centered phoniness — nonetheless devotes much time under the light of their devices.

Nuanced Portrayals and Tech-Savvy Tension

At the same time, the director has not crafted a rant against the vacuousness of the influencer industry. While it is gratifying to see CW manipulate different internet celebrities, and a Hitchcockian sense of alignment allows us to hope she evades capture, the filmmaker is relatively understanding of the key influencer figures. Previously, he keyed into the loneliness Madison experienced during ostensibly envy-worthy vacations. Here, Harder seems to trust that just observing Jacob at work will reveal that he’s peddling false masculinity to other gullible men; he resists turning into a caricature the character. He even grants Jacob a degree of respect through depicting his genuine loyalty to his partner; he is two-faced, yet Ariana is a collaborator in his hypocrisy, not someone exploited of it.

The other side of this balanced approach means it can sometimes appear that he’s nodding at elements of contemporary digital culture without deeply exploring them. This is especially true of the way he introduces artificial intelligence into the plot, an intriguing development which misses the psychosexual kick it should have. The pluralized title of Influencers might give fans of the first movie hope for a larger-scale escalation, and the movie ultimately delivers that, with a suitably chaotic climax. But before that, it’s more like a polished Hitchcock thriller than an frenzied, tech-addled De Palma-style shocker. Influencers’ heavy use of real-world locations might also be what prevents it from coming across like utter horror. The world might be saturated with content-churning influencers, online fraud, and self-serving tourism, but the world itself remains present, for now.