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“This whole affair stinks like a bad made-for-TV,” remarks a cynical podcaster midway through the chilling follow-up Influencers. At that point, his tone is dismissive in a calculated way of a guest whose outlandish story he previously claimed he believed. Yet his description of what’s happening in the movie isn’t wrong. On its face, a pair of streaming movies chronicling a woman who worms her way into the lives of social media stars and then murders them feels like a modern-day version of a tawdry but network-approved Movie of the Week. The wild thing about Influencers remains how much better it proves to be than plenty of its competition, irrespective of where you watch it. It’s the kind of suspense film capable of giving its peers a serious bout of FOMO.

Revisiting the First Film and Setting the Stage

The 2022 film Influencer tracks the mysterious CW (Cassandra Naud) as she methodically selects traveling alone social media targets, entices them to their deaths, and conceals those murders (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 2025's Influencers a degree of ambiguity, as returning filmmaker Kurtis David Harder picks up with the character CW contentedly residing with her girlfriend Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. During a trip to celebrate their first anniversary, UK-based influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) draws CW’s eye and anger.

CW comments to Diane that someone should try leaving a device-obsessed influencer in a place with no technology to see whether they can survive. Are we witnessing a backstory prequel? Did CW become extremist after witnessing the special treatment given to one clout-chaser?

Evolving Viewpoints and International Chases

The story’s perspective changes multiple times, ultimately revealing those introductory moments' place in the timeline. Harder catches up with Madison, now exonerated for carrying out CW’s crimes, yet still encounters suspicion over her recounting of what happened, including the murder of Madison’s boyfriend. The film also follows Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), based in Bali attempting to boost his profile as part of a right-wing-influencer power couple with Ariana (Veronica Long), though his chosen platform involves masculine-focused livestreams, as opposed to the Instagram photos that normally capture CW's interest.

Naud remains terrifically magnetic in the part, a role that appears especially custom-fit to her strengths. (She also designed CW's striking wardrobe.) Although the follow-up's focus tips heavily toward CW — the original seemed more balanced between her and Madison — it still works as a tale of dueling amateur detectives, with both women employ fabricated profiles, social media surveillance, and an apparently unlimited travel budget to pursue and/or escape one another. Of course, maybe the unlimited budget isn’t necessary. Online personalities possess a talent for gaining access to posh places at little cost, a skill which CW mirrors through her more blatant scheming.

Resourceful Production and Cinematic Travelogue

The filmmakers behind Influencers appear equally ingenious in locating beautiful places to film, though they were presumably more legitimate about it. Most of the movie seems to be shot on location, providing it a real-world weight that remains even when numerous sequences consist of a handful of actors of people staring at digital devices.

It’s the same principle that made the Bond franchise look so consistently opulent for decades: Indeed, big action and special effects can show off a big budget, but just providing a travelogue of sorts to viewers also feels deeply filmic. It’s also especially fitting for a narrative so dependent on the simultaneous surface-level allure and try-hard grind of creating envy-inducing digital content.

All of the characters in Bali, like those staying in Thailand in the first film, appear to enjoy access to impossibly chic contemporary villas; films exist about lifeguards which don't feature as much aerial pool video. The characters have to convincingly occupy these luxurious, far-flung locations to highlight the uncomfortable paradox of how often each person — including the woman exacting revenge on the influencers’ self-centered phoniness — nevertheless devotes much time in the glow of their screens.

Balanced Depictions and Digital-Age Suspense

At the same time, the director has not crafted a screed targeting the vacuousness of the influencer industry. While it can be gratifying to see CW exploit various online personalities, and a Hitchcockian sense of identification lets us to hope she evades capture, the filmmaker is relatively sympathetic to the major influencer characters. Previously, he keyed into the isolation Madison felt during supposedly dream getaways. Here, the director appears confident that just observing Jacob at work will reveal that he is selling false masculinity to other gullible men; he avoids caricaturing the character. He even grants Jacob a measure of dignity by showing his true devotion to his partner; he is two-faced, but Ariana is a collaborator in his hypocrisy, not a victim by it.

The flip 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. This is particularly evident of the way he introduces artificial intelligence into the plot, a fascinating turn that lacks the psychological edge it should have. The pluralized title of Influencers could offer fans of the first movie expectations of a larger-scale escalation, and the film ultimately delivers exactly that, with a suitably chaotic climax. However, initially, it’s more like a polished Alfred Hitchcock movie than a wild-eyed, tech-addled Brian De Palma thriller. Influencers’ extensive use of real-world locations may also be what prevents it from coming across like utter horror. The world might be saturated with always-online creators, digital deception, and exploitative travel, but reality itself remains present, for now.