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“The entire situation smells like a bad TV movie,” observes a cynical commentator during the chilling follow-up Influencers. At that point, 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 streaming movies chronicling a woman who worms her way into the lives of social media stars and then murders them feels like the 21st-century equivalent of a tawdry but network-approved Movie of the Week. The wild thing regarding Influencers is how much better it proves to be than plenty of its competition, irrespective of screen size. It’s the kind of 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 mysterious CW (Cassandra Naud) as she quietly chooses solo-traveling influencer targets, lures them to their doom, and conceals those murders (for a time) by seizing control of their socials. The film leaves off (spoiler ahead) with CW stranded on a deserted island off the coast of Thailand, after her latest target, Madison (Emily Tennant), turns the tables on her.

This lends 2025's Influencers a degree of mystery, when returning writer-director the director picks up with the character CW contentedly residing alongside her partner Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. During a trip to celebrate their one-year anniversary, British influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) draws CW’s eye and ire.

CW remarks to Diane that someone ought to attempt stranding a phone-addicted online personality somewhere without any devices to see if they can make it. Are we witnessing an origin-story prequel? Did CW become extremist after witnessing the special treatment afforded one fame-seeker?

Evolving Viewpoints and International Chases

The narrative viewpoint shifts several more times, eventually clarifying those introductory moments' place in the timeline. The story revisits Madison, now cleared of committing CW's offenses, yet still encounters suspicion regarding her recounting of what happened, including the murder of Madison’s boyfriend. The film also follows Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), living in Bali attempting to juice his career as part of a right-wing-influencer duo with Ariana (Veronica Long), though his chosen platform involves masculine-focused livestreams, as opposed to the Instagram photos that normally attract CW’s attention.

The actor continues to be terrifically magnetic in her role, which seems especially custom-fit for her talents. (She even created CW's striking outfits.) Although the follow-up'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 dueling investigators, with both women employ fabricated profiles, Insta-stalking, and a seemingly unlimited travel budget to pursue or evade each other. Of course, maybe the vast resources aren't needed. Online personalities possess a knack for getting to explore posh places without paying much, a skill which CW mirrors through her more blatant scamming.

Resourceful Production and Visual Wanderlust

The filmmakers behind Influencers appear equally ingenious in locating stunning locations to visit, although they were presumably less nefarious in their methods. The vast majority of the movie seems to be filmed in real places, giving it an authentic gravity that remains even as numerous sequences consist of a handful of actors of characters staring at digital devices.

It’s the same principle which allowed the James Bond movies appear so persistently lavish for decades: Yes, explosive action and special effects can display a big budget, however simply offering a travelogue of sorts to viewers also feels deeply filmic. It’s also particularly appropriate for a narrative so dependent on the coexisting surface-level allure and try-hard grind involved in producing jealousy-worthy digital content.

Every character visiting Bali, like those who were in Thailand in the original, appear to enjoy access to unbelievably stylish contemporary villas; films exist about lifeguards which don't feature this much aerial pool footage. These individuals have to convincingly occupy these luxurious, remote places to highlight the uncomfortable paradox of how frequently each person — even the woman wreaking vengeance upon the online stars' self-centered phoniness — nevertheless devotes much time under the light of their devices.

Nuanced Portrayals and Digital-Age Suspense

Simultaneously, the director has not crafted a rant targeting the emptiness of online fame. Though it is satisfying to watch CW manipulate different internet celebrities, and a Hitchcockian sense of identification allows us to hope she doesn’t get caught, Harder is somewhat understanding of the major influencer characters. In the first movie, he tapped into the loneliness Madison felt during supposedly envy-worthy vacations. Here, the director appears confident that merely watching Jacob at work will make it clear that he is selling snake-oil masculinity to other gullible men; he resists caricaturing the character further. He even grants Jacob a degree of respect through depicting his true devotion to his partner; he is two-faced, but Ariana is a partner in his hypocrisy, not someone exploited by it.

The other side of Harder’s even-keeled presentation means it can sometimes appear as if he is acknowledging elements of contemporary digital culture without deeply exploring them further. This is particularly evident regarding how he introduces artificial intelligence into the plot, a fascinating turn which misses the psychosexual kick it should have. The pluralized title for the film could offer devotees of the original expectations of a larger-scale ante-upping, and the movie does eventually provide exactly that, with an appropriately wild final act. However, initially, it resembles more a sleek Hitchcock thriller than an wild-eyed, tech-addled De Palma-style shocker. Influencers’ extensive use of actual places might also be what prevents it from seeming like utter horror. The world may be overrun with always-online creators, digital deception, and self-serving tourism, but reality itself is still here, at least for now.