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“The entire situation smells like a cheap TV movie,” observes an opportunistic podcaster midway through the chilling follow-up Influencers. At that point, he’s being dismissive in a calculated way toward an interviewee with an bizarre tale he once claimed he believed. But his assessment of what’s happening in the movie isn't inaccurate. Superficially, a pair of streaming movies chronicling a young woman who insinuates herself into the worlds of social media stars and then murders them feels like a modern-day version of a tawdry but network-approved weekly TV movie. The surprising aspect about Influencers is just how superior it proves to be than plenty of its competition, regardless of where you watch it. It is precisely the suspense film that should give its peers a serious bout of FOMO.

Revisiting the Original and Setting the Stage

The 2022 film Influencer tracks the enigmatic CW (Cassandra Naud) while she quietly chooses traveling alone influencer targets, lures them to their doom, and conceals those deaths (for a time) by seizing control of their socials. The film concludes (spoiler ahead) with CW stranded on a deserted island near the coast of Thailand, following her most recent mark, Madison (Emily Tennant), turns the tables on her.

This provides 2025's Influencers a degree of mystery, when returning writer-director the director resumes with CW happily living alongside her partner Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. During a trip to celebrate their first anniversary, British influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) catches CW's attention and anger.

CW comments to her partner that someone should try leaving a device-obsessed influencer in a place without any devices to see if they can survive. Are we witnessing an origin-story prequel? Did CW become extremist after witnessing the preferential treatment given to one clout-chaser?

Shifting Perspectives and Global Pursuits

The narrative viewpoint shifts several more times, ultimately revealing those early scenes’ place in the timeline. Harder catches up with Madison, who has been cleared of committing CW's offenses, yet still encounters doubt over her version of the events, including the killing 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 with Ariana (Veronica Long), although his chosen platform is bro-heavy streams, rather than the Instagram photos that normally capture CW's interest.

The actor continues to be immensely captivating in her role, a role that appears especially tailor-made for her talents. (She also designed CW's eye-catching outfits.) Although the sequel’s screentime balance leans heavily into CW — the first film felt more equally divided between the two women — it still works as a story of rival amateur detectives, with both women both use fake accounts, Insta-stalking, and an apparently limitless travel fund to pursue or evade one another. Of course, maybe the unlimited budget aren't needed. Online personalities possess a knack for getting to explore posh places without paying much, an ability that CW echoes with her more overt scamming.

Ingenious Filmmaking and Visual Wanderlust

The filmmakers behind Influencers appear equally resourceful about finding beautiful places to film, although they were likely more legitimate in their methods. The vast majority of the movie appears to be shot on location, giving it an authentic gravity that lingers even when numerous sequences consist of a relatively small cast of people staring at computer or phone screens.

It follows the same logic that made the Bond franchise look so persistently lavish over the years: Yes, big action and visual effects can display a big budget, but just providing a travelogue of sorts for the audience also feels deeply filmic. It’s also particularly appropriate for a story so rooted in the simultaneous superficial glamour and desperate hustle of creating jealousy-worthy digital content.

All of the characters visiting Bali, like those staying in Thailand in the original, seem to have access to impossibly chic contemporary villas; there are movies concerning beach rescuers that don’t show off as much overhead swimming-pool video. These individuals must believably inhabit these luxurious, far-flung locations to emphasize the uncomfortable paradox of how frequently each person — including the woman exacting revenge on the influencers’ narcissistic falseness — nevertheless devotes much time under the light of their screens.

Balanced Depictions and Tech-Savvy Tension

Simultaneously, the director has not crafted a rant against the emptiness of online fame. While it can be satisfying to see CW manipulate different internet celebrities, and a Hitchcockian sense of alignment allows us to hope she evades capture, the filmmaker is somewhat sympathetic to the major influencer characters. In the first movie, he tapped into the isolation Madison felt while on ostensibly dream getaways. In this film, Harder seems to trust that just observing Jacob at work will reveal that he is selling false 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 partner; he’s a hypocrite, but Ariana is a partner in his double standards, not someone exploited by it.

The other side of this balanced approach means it may occasionally seem as if he’s nodding at elements of contemporary digital culture 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 retitled sequel for the film might give fans of the first movie expectations of a larger-scale ante-upping, and the movie ultimately delivers that, with a suitably wild final act. But before that, it resembles more a sleek Alfred Hitchcock movie than a frenzied, tech-addled Brian De Palma thriller. Influencers’ heavy use of actual places might also be what prevents it from seeming like pure nightmare fuel. The world might be saturated with content-churning influencers, online fraud, and self-serving tourism, but reality itself remains present, at least for now.