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“Everything about this smells of a cheap TV movie,” states a cynical podcaster during the chilling follow-up Influencers. In the moment, his tone is manipulatively dismissive toward an interviewee with an bizarre tale he previously claimed he believed. But his description of the events in the movie isn’t wrong. Superficially, two streaming movies about a woman who insinuates herself into the worlds of social media stars before killing them feels like the 21st-century equivalent of a tawdry yet cable-ready Movie of the Week. The surprising aspect regarding Influencers is just how superior it is compared to much of the competition, irrespective of screen size. It is precisely the suspense film capable of giving other movies a bad case of FOMO.

Revisiting the First Film and Establishing the Scene

The 2022 film Influencer follows the enigmatic CW (Cassandra Naud) while she methodically selects traveling alone influencer targets, lures them to their deaths, and conceals those deaths (for a time) by seizing control of their socials. The movie leaves off (spoiler ahead) with CW stranded on a deserted island off the coast of Thailand, following her latest target, Madison (Emily Tennant), turns the tables against her.

This lends the 2025 Influencers a degree of ambiguity, when returning filmmaker the director picks up with CW happily living alongside her partner Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. During a trip to celebrate the couple’s one-year anniversary, UK-based influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) draws CW’s eye and ire.

CW comments to Diane that someone should try leaving a device-obsessed online personality somewhere with no technology to see whether they can make it. Is this an origin-story prequel? Did CW become extremist after witnessing the preferential treatment afforded a single clout-chaser?

Shifting Perspectives and Global Pursuits

The narrative viewpoint changes multiple times, eventually clarifying those introductory moments' chronological position. The story revisits Madison, now cleared of carrying out CW's offenses, but still faces suspicion over her recounting of what happened, including the murder of her boyfriend. We also follow Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), based in Bali attempting to boost his profile as part of a right-wing-influencer power couple alongside Ariana (Veronica Long), though his preferred medium involves masculine-focused livestreams, rather than the Instagram photos that typically attract CW’s attention.

The actor continues to be terrifically magnetic in her role, which seems especially tailor-made for her talents. (She also designed CW's striking wardrobe.) While the sequel’s screentime balance tips heavily toward CW — the original felt more equally divided between the two women — it still functions as a tale of rival investigators, with both women employ fabricated profiles, social media surveillance, and an apparently 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 getting to explore posh places without paying much, a skill that CW echoes through her more blatant scamming.

Ingenious Filmmaking and Cinematic Travelogue

The creative team for Influencers seem similarly resourceful in locating stunning locations to film, though they were presumably less nefarious about it. The vast majority of the film appears to be shot on location, providing it a real-world weight that lingers even when numerous sequences consist of a handful of actors of people looking at digital devices.

It’s the same principle that made the James Bond movies appear so consistently opulent for decades: Indeed, explosive action and special effects can show off a big budget, but just providing a travelogue of sorts for the audience also feels deeply filmic. It’s also especially fitting for a narrative so dependent on the coexisting surface-level allure and desperate hustle of creating envy-inducing digital content.

Every character in Bali, like those staying in Thailand in the first film, appear to enjoy entry to unbelievably stylish modern bungalows; there are movies concerning beach rescuers that don’t show off this much aerial pool video. These individuals have to convincingly inhabit these lush, far-flung locations to emphasize the uncomfortable paradox of how often each person — even the woman exacting revenge on the influencers’ narcissistic falseness — nevertheless spends plenty of time in the glow of their devices.

Balanced Depictions and Digital-Age Suspense

Simultaneously, the director has not crafted a rant against the emptiness of online fame. Though it is gratifying to watch CW exploit various online personalities, and a sense reminiscent of Hitchcock of identification allows us to hope she evades capture, the filmmaker is somewhat sympathetic to the key influencer figures. Previously, he tapped into the loneliness Madison felt while on ostensibly dream getaways. In this film, Harder seems to trust that merely watching Jacob in action will reveal that he is selling snake-oil masculinity to other gullible men; he resists caricaturing the character. He even grants Jacob a degree of respect by showing his genuine loyalty to his partner; he’s a hypocrite, but Ariana is a partner in his double standards, not someone exploited by it.

The other side of Harder’s even-keeled presentation means it may occasionally seem as if he is acknowledging bits of modern online life without deeply exploring them. This is especially true of the way he introduces artificial intelligence into the story, a fascinating turn that lacks the psychosexual kick it deserves. The pluralized title of Influencers could offer fans of the first movie hope for a larger-scale escalation, and the film ultimately delivers that, with an appropriately wild final act. However, initially, it’s more like a polished Hitchcock thriller than an wild-eyed, tech-addled De Palma-style shocker. Influencers’ heavy use of actual places may also be what keeps it from coming across like utter horror. Our society may be overrun with always-online creators, online fraud, and exploitative travel, but the world itself is still here, at least for now.