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“This whole affair reeks like a cheap TV movie,” remarks a cynical commentator during the chilling follow-up Influencers. In the moment, he’s being dismissive in a calculated way of a guest whose bizarre tale he once said he trusted. Yet his assessment of what’s happening in the movie isn't inaccurate. On its face, two films on demand about a woman who insinuates herself into the worlds of social media stars before killing them feels like the 21st-century equivalent of a tawdry but network-approved Movie of the Week. The wild thing regarding Influencers is just how superior it is than plenty of its competition, irrespective of screen size. It’s the kind of suspense film that should give its peers a bad case of FOMO.

Revisiting the Original and Setting the Stage

The 2022 film Influencer tracks the enigmatic CW (Cassandra Naud) while she methodically selects solo-traveling influencer targets, entices them to their doom, and covers up those murders (at least temporarily) by seizing control of their online accounts. The movie concludes (spoiler ahead) with CW stranded on an uninhabited island near the coast of Thailand, after her most recent mark, Madison (Emily Tennant), reverses their roles against her.

This lends 2025's Influencers a degree of mystery, when returning writer-director Kurtis David Harder resumes with CW happily living with her girlfriend Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. On a journey marking the couple’s one-year anniversary, British influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) catches CW’s eye and anger.

CW comments to Diane that a person ought to attempt leaving a device-obsessed influencer somewhere without any devices and see if they can make it. Are we witnessing a backstory prequel? Did CW become extremist after witnessing the preferential treatment afforded a single fame-seeker?

Shifting Perspectives and International Chases

The story’s perspective changes multiple times, ultimately revealing those introductory moments' place in the timeline. The story revisits Madison, now cleared of committing CW’s crimes, but still faces doubt regarding her version of what happened, which includes the killing of Madison’s boyfriend. We also follow Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), living in Bali and trying to juice his career as part of a conservative-influencer power couple with Ariana (Veronica Long), though his preferred medium is bro-heavy streams, rather than the Instagram photos that normally capture CW's interest.

Naud remains terrifically magnetic in her role, which seems particularly custom-fit to her strengths. (She also designed CW's striking wardrobe.) Although 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 rival amateur detectives, with both women both use fake accounts, social media surveillance, and an apparently limitless travel fund to chase or evade one another. Then again, perhaps the unlimited budget isn’t necessary. Online personalities possess a knack for getting to explore posh places at little cost, a skill that CW echoes through her more blatant scamming.

Ingenious Filmmaking and Visual Wanderlust

The creative team for Influencers appear equally resourceful in locating stunning locations to visit, though they were likely less nefarious in their methods. Most of the film appears to be filmed in real places, giving it an authentic gravity that lingers even when many scenes involve a relatively small cast of people looking at digital devices.

It’s the same principle that made the James Bond movies appear so consistently opulent over the years: Indeed, explosive action and visual effects can display large spending, however just providing a travelogue of sorts for the audience also seems inherently cinematic. It’s also especially fitting for a story so dependent on the simultaneous superficial glamour and try-hard grind of creating jealousy-worthy digital content.

Every character visiting Bali, similar to those staying in Thailand in the first film, appear to enjoy entry to impossibly chic modern bungalows; there are movies concerning beach rescuers which don't feature this much overhead swimming-pool video. The characters have to convincingly occupy these lush, remote places to highlight the uncomfortable paradox of how often everyone — including the woman wreaking vengeance upon the online stars' narcissistic falseness — nonetheless spends plenty of time under the light of their screens.

Nuanced Portrayals and Tech-Savvy Tension

Simultaneously, Harder hasn’t authored a screed targeting the emptiness of the influencer industry. While it can be satisfying to see CW manipulate various online personalities, and a Hitchcockian sense of alignment allows us to wish she doesn’t get caught, the filmmaker is somewhat sympathetic to the key influencer figures. In the first movie, he tapped into the loneliness Madison experienced during supposedly envy-worthy vacations. In this film, Harder seems to trust that just observing Jacob in action will reveal that he is selling snake-oil masculinity to other doofuses; he avoids turning into a caricature the character. He even grants Jacob a degree of respect by showing his true devotion to his partner; he is two-faced, but Ariana is a collaborator in his double standards, not a victim by it.

The flip side of this balanced approach is that it can sometimes appear as if he is acknowledging elements of contemporary digital culture without deeply exploring them. This is especially true regarding how he brings AI into the plot, an intriguing development which misses the psychosexual kick it deserves. The pluralized title for the film could offer fans of the first movie expectations of a larger-scale ante-upping, and the film ultimately delivers exactly that, with a suitably wild final act. However, initially, it’s more like a polished Hitchcock thriller than a frenzied, tech-addled Brian De Palma thriller. Influencers’ heavy use of actual places may also be what prevents it from seeming like pure nightmare fuel. The world may be overrun with always-online creators, digital deception, and self-serving tourism, but reality itself is still here, for now.