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“This whole affair smells like a bad made-for-TV,” observes an opportunistic commentator during the chilling follow-up Influencers. In the moment, his tone is dismissive in a calculated way of a guest with an bizarre tale he previously claimed he believed. But his description of what’s happening in the movie isn't inaccurate. Superficially, two streaming movies about a young woman who insinuates herself into the worlds of online influencers and then murders them seems like the 21st-century equivalent of a tawdry but cable-ready weekly TV movie. The wild thing regarding Influencers remains just how superior it proves to be than plenty of its competition, regardless of where you watch it. It is precisely the suspense film capable of giving other movies a bad case of FOMO.

Revisiting the First Film and Setting the Stage

The 2022 film Influencer tracks the mysterious CW (Cassandra Naud) while she methodically selects traveling alone social media targets, entices them to their doom, and conceals those murders (at least temporarily) by seizing control of their online accounts. The film concludes (spoiler ahead) with CW marooned on an uninhabited island near the coast of Thailand, after her most recent mark, Madison (Emily Tennant), turns the tables against her.

This provides the 2025 Influencers a degree of ambiguity, as returning filmmaker Kurtis David Harder resumes with CW contentedly residing with her girlfriend Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. On a journey to celebrate their one-year anniversary, British influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) catches CW’s eye and ire.

CW remarks to Diane that a person ought to attempt stranding a device-obsessed online personality in a place with no technology and see whether they can make it. Is this a backstory prequel? Was CW radicalized after witnessing the preferential treatment afforded one fame-seeker?

Shifting Perspectives and Global Pursuits

The narrative viewpoint 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, yet still encounters doubt over her recounting of what happened, which includes the murder of Madison’s boyfriend. We also follow Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), living in Bali attempting to boost his profile as part of a right-wing-influencer duo alongside Ariana (Veronica Long), though his preferred medium is bro-heavy streams, rather than the curated images that normally attract CW’s attention.

The actor continues to be immensely captivating in the part, a role that appears especially custom-fit for her talents. (She even created CW's striking wardrobe.) Although the follow-up's focus leans heavily into CW — the first film felt more equally divided between the two women — it still functions as a story of rival investigators, with both women employ fabricated profiles, Insta-stalking, and an apparently limitless travel fund to chase or evade one another. Then again, maybe the unlimited budget isn’t necessary. Online personalities possess a knack for gaining access to luxurious locales at little cost, an ability which CW mirrors through her more blatant scamming.

Resourceful Production and Cinematic Travelogue

The filmmakers behind Influencers appear equally resourceful about finding stunning locations to visit, although they were presumably less nefarious about it. The vast majority of the film seems to be shot on location, providing it a real-world weight that remains even when many scenes involve a relatively small cast of people looking at digital devices.

It follows the same logic which allowed the Bond franchise look so consistently opulent for decades: Yes, explosive action and visual effects can display large spending, however simply offering a kind of visual tour to viewers also feels deeply filmic. It’s also especially fitting for a narrative so dependent on the simultaneous surface-level allure and desperate hustle involved in producing envy-inducing online content.

Every character visiting Bali, similar to those who were in Thailand in the first film, seem to have entry to unbelievably stylish contemporary villas; there are movies concerning beach rescuers that don’t show off this much aerial pool video. These individuals must believably inhabit these luxurious, far-flung locations to highlight the uneasy irony of how frequently each person — even 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, the director has not crafted a rant against the emptiness of online fame. While it is gratifying to see CW exploit various online personalities, and a Hitchcockian sense of alignment allows us to hope she doesn’t get caught, the filmmaker is somewhat sympathetic to the key influencer figures. Previously, he keyed into the isolation Madison experienced while on supposedly envy-worthy vacations. Here, Harder seems to trust that merely watching Jacob in action will make it clear that he’s peddling snake-oil masculinity to other doofuses; he resists turning into a caricature the character. He even grants Jacob a measure of dignity through depicting his genuine loyalty to his girlfriend; he’s a hypocrite, yet Ariana is a partner in his hypocrisy, not a victim of it.

The flip side of this balanced approach is that it can sometimes appear as if he is acknowledging bits of modern online life without deeply exploring them further. This is especially true of the way he introduces artificial intelligence into the plot, an intriguing development that lacks the psychosexual kick it deserves. The retitled sequel of Influencers might give fans of the first movie hope for a larger-scale ante-upping, and the movie ultimately delivers exactly that, with an appropriately chaotic climax. However, initially, it resembles more a polished Alfred Hitchcock movie than a wild-eyed, tech-addled Brian De Palma thriller. Influencers’ extensive use of real-world locations might also be what keeps it from seeming like pure nightmare fuel. Our society might be saturated with content-churning influencers, digital deception, and self-serving tourism, but reality itself remains present, for now.