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“The entire situation smells of a bad TV movie,” remarks an opportunistic podcaster during the chilling follow-up Influencers. In the moment, he’s being dismissive in a calculated way of a guest with an outlandish story he previously claimed he believed. But his description of what’s happening on screen isn't inaccurate. On its face, a pair of films on demand chronicling a young woman who worms her way into the worlds of social media stars before killing them seems like a modern-day version of a tawdry yet cable-ready Movie of the Week. The wild thing regarding Influencers is just how superior it proves to be than plenty of the competition, regardless of screen size. It’s the kind of suspense film capable of giving its peers a bad case of FOMO.

Revisiting the First Film and Setting the Stage

The 2022 film Influencer tracks the enigmatic CW (Cassandra Naud) as she quietly chooses traveling alone influencer targets, lures them to their deaths, and covers up those deaths (at least temporarily) by seizing control of their online accounts. The movie concludes (spoiler ahead) with CW marooned on a deserted island off the coast of Thailand, after her latest target, Madison (Emily Tennant), reverses their roles against her.

This lends 2025's Influencers a degree of mystery, as returning writer-director Kurtis David Harder resumes with the character CW contentedly residing alongside her partner Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. On a journey to celebrate the couple’s first anniversary, British influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) catches CW's attention and anger.

CW remarks to Diane that a person should try stranding a device-obsessed online personality somewhere with no technology and see if they can make it. Is this an origin-story prequel? Did CW become extremist by seeing the special treatment afforded one fame-seeker?

Evolving Viewpoints and International Chases

The narrative viewpoint changes multiple times, eventually clarifying those early scenes’ chronological position. 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 Madison’s boyfriend. The film also follows Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), living in Bali attempting to juice his career as half of a conservative-influencer duo with Ariana (Veronica Long), although his preferred medium involves masculine-focused livestreams, as opposed to the curated images that normally attract CW’s attention.

The actor continues to be terrifically magnetic in her role, a role that appears especially tailor-made to her strengths. (She even created CW's striking wardrobe.) While the follow-up's screentime balance tips heavily toward CW — the first film felt more equally divided between the two women — it still works as a tale of dueling investigators, with both women both use fabricated profiles, Insta-stalking, and a seemingly unlimited travel budget to chase or evade one another. Of course, maybe the unlimited budget aren't needed. Influencers have a talent for getting to explore posh places at little cost, an ability that CW echoes through her more blatant scamming.

Resourceful Production and Cinematic Travelogue

The creative team for Influencers seem similarly resourceful about finding stunning locations to film, though they were likely more legitimate about it. The vast majority of the film seems to be filmed in real places, giving it a real-world weight that lingers even when numerous sequences involve a relatively small cast of characters looking at digital devices.

It follows the same logic which allowed the James Bond movies look so consistently opulent for decades: Indeed, explosive action and special effects can show off a big budget, however simply offering a kind of visual tour to viewers also seems inherently cinematic. This is particularly appropriate for a story so dependent on the simultaneous surface-level allure and try-hard grind involved in producing jealousy-worthy online content.

Every character visiting Bali, similar to those who were in Thailand in the original, appear to enjoy access to impossibly chic contemporary villas; there are movies about lifeguards which don't feature this much aerial pool video. The characters have to convincingly inhabit these lush, remote places to highlight the uncomfortable paradox of how frequently everyone — including the woman wreaking vengeance upon the online stars' self-centered phoniness — nevertheless spends plenty of time in the glow of their devices.

Nuanced Portrayals and Digital-Age Suspense

Simultaneously, the director has not crafted a screed targeting the emptiness of the influencer industry. While it can be satisfying to see CW exploit various online personalities, and a sense reminiscent of Hitchcock of identification allows us to hope she evades capture, the filmmaker is relatively sympathetic to the key influencer figures. In the first movie, he keyed into the loneliness Madison felt while on supposedly dream getaways. Here, the director appears confident that just observing Jacob in action will reveal that he is selling false masculinity to other gullible men; he avoids turning into a caricature the character. He even gives Jacob a degree of respect through depicting his genuine loyalty to his partner; he is two-faced, but Ariana is a collaborator in his double standards, not someone exploited by it.

The other side of this balanced approach is that it may occasionally seem that he is acknowledging elements of contemporary digital culture without investigating them further. This is particularly evident regarding how he introduces artificial intelligence into the plot, an intriguing development which misses the psychological edge it should have. The pluralized title of Influencers could offer devotees of the original hope for an Aliens-style ante-upping, and the movie does eventually provide exactly that, with an appropriately wild final act. However, initially, it’s more like a sleek Alfred Hitchcock movie than a wild-eyed, technology-obsessed Brian De Palma thriller. Influencers’ extensive use of actual places might also be what keeps it from seeming like pure nightmare fuel. Our society might be saturated with content-churning influencers, digital deception, and exploitative travel, but the world itself remains present, at least for now.