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“This whole affair reeks like a cheap TV movie,” states a cynical podcaster midway through the chilling follow-up Influencers. At that point, his tone is manipulatively dismissive of a guest whose outlandish story he once said he trusted. Yet his description of the events in the movie isn't inaccurate. Superficially, a pair of films on demand about a woman who insinuates herself into the worlds of social media stars before killing them feels like a modern-day version of a lurid but network-approved Movie of the Week. The wild thing about Influencers remains how much better it proves to be compared to much of the competition, irrespective of where you watch it. It’s the kind of suspense film that should give other movies a serious bout of FOMO.

Recapping the Original and Setting the Stage

The 2022 film Influencer follows the enigmatic CW (Cassandra Naud) as she methodically selects traveling alone social media targets, entices them to their deaths, and covers up those murders (for a time) by seizing control of their socials. The film leaves off (spoiler ahead) with CW marooned on a deserted island off the coast of Thailand, following her most recent mark, Madison (Emily Tennant), turns the tables on her.

This provides the 2025 Influencers some early mystery, as returning writer-director Kurtis David Harder resumes with the character CW contentedly residing with her girlfriend Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. On a journey to celebrate the couple’s one-year anniversary, British influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) catches CW’s eye and ire.

CW remarks to her partner that a person ought to attempt leaving a device-obsessed influencer in a place without any devices to see if they can make it. Is this an origin-story prequel? Did CW become extremist after witnessing the preferential treatment afforded a single clout-chaser?

Shifting Perspectives and International Chases

The narrative viewpoint changes multiple times, ultimately revealing those introductory moments' place in the timeline. The story revisits Madison, who has been cleared of committing CW's offenses, yet still encounters doubt over her version of what happened, which includes the killing of her boyfriend. The film also follows Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), living in Bali and trying to boost his profile as half of a conservative-influencer duo with Ariana (Veronica Long), though his preferred medium is bro-heavy streams, rather than the Instagram photos that normally attract CW's interest.

Naud remains terrifically magnetic in her role, a role that appears particularly tailor-made to her strengths. (She also designed CW's eye-catching outfits.) Although the follow-up's screentime balance tips heavily toward CW — the first film seemed more balanced between the two women — it still functions as a story of rival investigators, with both women both use fabricated profiles, Insta-stalking, and an apparently unlimited travel budget to chase and/or escape one another. Of course, maybe the vast resources isn’t necessary. Online personalities possess a knack for gaining access to posh places at little cost, an ability that CW echoes with her more overt scamming.

Resourceful Production and Cinematic Travelogue

The filmmakers behind Influencers seem similarly ingenious in locating stunning locations to film, though they were presumably more legitimate in their methods. The vast majority of the film appears to be shot on location, providing it an authentic gravity that lingers even as numerous sequences consist of a relatively small cast of people staring at digital devices.

It’s the same principle that made the James Bond movies look so persistently lavish for decades: Yes, explosive action and visual effects can display a big budget, but just providing a travelogue of sorts for the audience also feels inherently cinematic. This is especially fitting for a narrative so rooted in the simultaneous surface-level allure and try-hard grind of creating envy-inducing online content.

Every character in Bali, similar to those staying in Thailand in the first film, seem to have access to unbelievably stylish contemporary villas; films exist about lifeguards which don't feature as much aerial pool footage. The characters must believably inhabit these lush, far-flung locations to highlight the uncomfortable paradox of how often each person — including the woman exacting revenge upon the online stars' self-centered phoniness — nonetheless spends plenty of time in the glow of their devices.

Balanced Depictions and Tech-Savvy Tension

Simultaneously, Harder hasn’t authored a rant targeting the emptiness of the influencer industry. While it can be gratifying to watch CW manipulate different internet celebrities, and a sense reminiscent of Hitchcock of alignment allows us to hope she evades capture, the filmmaker is relatively understanding of the key influencer figures. In the first movie, he keyed into the isolation Madison experienced while on supposedly envy-worthy vacations. In this film, Harder seems to trust that merely watching Jacob in action will make it clear that he is selling false masculinity to other doofuses; he avoids caricaturing the character. He even gives Jacob a measure of dignity by showing his genuine loyalty to his partner; he is two-faced, but Ariana is a partner in his double standards, not a victim of it.

The other side of this balanced approach is that it can sometimes appear as if he is acknowledging bits of modern online life without investigating them further. This is especially true of the way he introduces artificial intelligence into the plot, an intriguing development which misses the psychosexual kick it deserves. The retitled sequel for the film might give fans of the first movie expectations of an Aliens-style ante-upping, and the film ultimately delivers that, with a suitably wild final act. But before that, it resembles more a polished Hitchcock thriller than an wild-eyed, tech-addled Brian De Palma thriller. Influencers’ heavy use of real-world locations might also be what prevents it from coming across like utter horror. The world might be saturated with content-churning influencers, digital deception, and self-serving tourism, but reality itself is still here, for now.