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“This whole affair reeks like a cheap TV movie,” remarks a cynical podcaster during the chilling follow-up Influencers. In the moment, he’s being dismissive in a calculated way toward an interviewee with an bizarre tale he once said he trusted. Yet his description of what’s happening on screen isn't inaccurate. On its face, a pair of streaming movies about a woman who worms her way into the worlds of social media stars before killing them seems like a modern-day version of a tawdry but network-approved Movie of the Week. The surprising aspect regarding Influencers remains just how superior it proves to be than plenty of the competition, irrespective of where you watch it. It is precisely the suspense film that should give 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, entices them to their doom, and covers up those deaths (at least temporarily) by taking control of their online accounts. The movie concludes (spoiler ahead) with CW marooned on an uninhabited island near the coast of Thailand, following her most recent mark, Madison (Emily Tennant), turns the tables on her.

This lends the 2025 Influencers some early ambiguity, as returning writer-director Kurtis David Harder resumes with CW contentedly residing alongside her partner Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. On a journey marking their first anniversary, British influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) catches CW's attention and ire.

CW comments to her partner that a person should try leaving a device-obsessed influencer in a place without any devices to see if they can make it. Is this an origin-story prequel? Was CW radicalized after witnessing the preferential treatment afforded one clout-chaser?

Shifting Perspectives and Global Pursuits

The narrative viewpoint changes multiple times, ultimately revealing those introductory moments' place in the timeline. Harder catches up with Madison, who has been cleared of committing CW's offenses, yet still encounters suspicion regarding her version of what happened, including the killing of her boyfriend. We also follow Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), based in Bali and trying to boost his profile as half of a conservative-influencer power couple with Ariana (Veronica Long), though his chosen platform involves masculine-focused livestreams, rather than the curated images that typically capture CW’s attention.

Naud remains immensely captivating in her role, which seems particularly custom-fit to her strengths. (She also designed CW's eye-catching wardrobe.) While the follow-up's focus leans heavily into CW — the original felt more equally divided between the two women — it still functions as a tale of rival amateur detectives, with both women employ fake accounts, social media surveillance, and an apparently limitless travel fund to pursue and/or escape each other. Of course, maybe the unlimited budget isn’t necessary. Online personalities possess a talent for getting to explore posh places at little cost, an ability that CW echoes through her more blatant scheming.

Resourceful Production and Visual Wanderlust

The creative team for Influencers appear equally ingenious about finding beautiful places to film, though they were likely less nefarious about it. Most of the film appears to be filmed in real places, giving it a real-world weight that remains even as many scenes consist of a handful of actors of people looking at digital devices.

It follows the same logic which allowed the James Bond movies appear so persistently lavish for decades: Indeed, big action and special effects can display large spending, however simply offering a travelogue of sorts to viewers also feels inherently cinematic. It’s also particularly appropriate for a story so dependent on the simultaneous surface-level allure and desperate hustle of creating envy-inducing online content.

All of the characters visiting Bali, like those who were in Thailand in the first film, appear to enjoy access to unbelievably stylish modern bungalows; films exist about lifeguards which don't feature as much overhead swimming-pool footage. These individuals must believably occupy these luxurious, far-flung locations to highlight the uneasy irony of how often each person — even the woman wreaking vengeance on the influencers’ self-centered phoniness — nonetheless devotes much time under the light of their devices.

Nuanced Portrayals and Tech-Savvy Tension

Simultaneously, Harder hasn’t authored a screed targeting the vacuousness of the influencer industry. While it can be gratifying to watch CW exploit different internet celebrities, and a sense reminiscent of Hitchcock of alignment allows us to hope she doesn’t get caught, Harder is somewhat understanding of the major influencer characters. Previously, he keyed into the loneliness Madison experienced while on ostensibly envy-worthy vacations. Here, the director appears confident that just observing Jacob at work will reveal that he’s peddling snake-oil masculinity to other gullible men; he resists turning into a caricature the character. He even gives Jacob a measure of dignity through depicting his true devotion to his girlfriend; he’s a hypocrite, but Ariana is a collaborator in his hypocrisy, not a victim by it.

The other side of Harder’s even-keeled presentation is that it can sometimes appear that he is acknowledging bits of contemporary digital culture without deeply exploring them further. This is particularly evident of the way he brings AI into the story, an intriguing development that lacks the psychosexual kick it should have. The pluralized title for the film could offer fans of the first movie hope for a larger-scale escalation, and the movie ultimately delivers that, with a suitably wild final act. However, initially, it resembles more a sleek Hitchcock thriller than an frenzied, technology-obsessed De Palma-style shocker. Influencers’ extensive use of actual places might also be what keeps it from seeming like utter horror. The world might be saturated with always-online creators, digital deception, and exploitative travel, but the world itself is still here, for now.