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“The entire situation smells of a cheap made-for-TV,” remarks an opportunistic commentator midway through the chilling follow-up Influencers. In the moment, his tone is dismissive in a calculated way toward an interviewee with an bizarre tale he previously said he trusted. Yet his description of the events on screen isn’t wrong. On its face, two streaming movies chronicling a woman who worms her way into the lives of social media stars before killing them feels like the 21st-century equivalent of a tawdry but cable-ready Movie of the Week. The wild thing about Influencers is just how superior it proves to be than plenty of the competition, irrespective of screen size. It is precisely the suspense film capable of giving its peers a serious bout of FOMO.

Revisiting the First Film and Establishing the Scene

The 2022 film Influencer tracks the enigmatic CW (Cassandra Naud) as she quietly chooses solo-traveling influencer targets, lures them to their doom, and covers up those deaths (at least temporarily) by taking control of their online accounts. The film leaves off (spoiler ahead) with CW stranded on an uninhabited island near the coast of Thailand, following her latest target, Madison (Emily Tennant), turns the tables on her.

This lends 2025's Influencers some early ambiguity, as returning filmmaker Kurtis David Harder picks up with the character CW happily living alongside her partner Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. On a journey to celebrate their one-year anniversary, UK-based influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) catches CW's attention and ire.

CW remarks to her partner that a person should try leaving a device-obsessed online personality somewhere with no technology and see if they can survive. Are we witnessing a backstory prequel? Did CW become extremist by seeing the special treatment afforded one clout-chaser?

Shifting Perspectives and International Chases

The story’s perspective shifts several more times, eventually clarifying those introductory moments' place in the timeline. Harder catches up with Madison, who has been cleared of committing 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), based in Bali attempting to boost his profile as part of a right-wing-influencer power couple with Ariana (Veronica Long), though his chosen platform is bro-heavy streams, rather than the Instagram photos that typically attract CW's interest.

Naud remains terrifically magnetic in her role, a role that appears particularly tailor-made for her talents. (She even created CW's striking wardrobe.) While the follow-up's focus leans heavily into CW — the first film seemed more balanced between the two women — it still works as a story of dueling investigators, as Madison and CW both use fake accounts, Insta-stalking, and an apparently unlimited travel budget to pursue or evade one another. Of course, perhaps the vast resources isn’t necessary. Online personalities possess a knack for gaining access to posh places at little cost, a skill that CW echoes with her more overt scamming.

Resourceful Production and Cinematic Travelogue

The creative team for Influencers seem similarly resourceful about finding beautiful places to film, though they were presumably less nefarious in their methods. The vast majority of the film appears to be shot on location, providing it a real-world weight that remains even as numerous sequences involve a handful of actors of people staring at computer or phone screens.

It’s the same principle that made the James Bond movies appear so persistently lavish over the years: Yes, big action and special effects can show off large spending, however just providing a travelogue of sorts for the audience also feels deeply filmic. This is particularly appropriate for a narrative so dependent on the simultaneous surface-level allure and try-hard grind involved in producing envy-inducing online content.

Every character visiting Bali, like those who were in Thailand in the original, seem to have entry to impossibly chic modern bungalows; there are movies about lifeguards that don’t show off this much overhead swimming-pool footage. These individuals have to convincingly occupy these lush, remote places to highlight the uneasy irony of how often each person — even the woman exacting revenge on the influencers’ narcissistic falseness — nevertheless devotes much 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. Though it can be satisfying to watch CW manipulate different internet celebrities, and a Hitchcockian sense of alignment lets us to wish she evades capture, Harder is relatively understanding of the major influencer characters. In the first movie, he tapped into the loneliness Madison experienced while on supposedly dream getaways. In this film, the director appears confident that merely watching Jacob in action will make it clear that he’s peddling snake-oil masculinity to other gullible men; he resists turning into a caricature the character further. He even grants Jacob a degree of respect through depicting his genuine loyalty to his partner; he is two-faced, but Ariana is a collaborator in his hypocrisy, not a victim of it.

The flip side of Harder’s even-keeled presentation means it may occasionally seem that he’s nodding at elements of modern online life without investigating them. This is especially true of the way he introduces artificial intelligence into the story, a fascinating turn which misses the psychosexual kick it deserves. The pluralized title of Influencers might give fans of the first movie hope for a larger-scale escalation, and the movie ultimately delivers that, with a suitably chaotic climax. But before that, it resembles more a sleek Alfred Hitchcock movie than a wild-eyed, tech-addled Brian De Palma thriller. Influencers’ extensive use of actual places may also be what keeps it from coming across like utter horror. Our society might be saturated with content-churning influencers, digital deception, and self-serving tourism, but the world itself remains present, for now.