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“This whole affair stinks of a bad made-for-TV,” remarks a cynical podcaster 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 once said he trusted. Yet his assessment of the events in the movie isn't inaccurate. Superficially, a pair of films on demand chronicling a young woman who worms her way into the lives of online influencers before killing them feels like the 21st-century equivalent of a tawdry but cable-ready weekly TV movie. The surprising aspect about Influencers remains how much better it is than plenty of its competition, regardless of screen size. It’s the kind of suspense film capable of giving other movies a serious bout of FOMO.

Revisiting the First Film 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 covers up those murders (at least temporarily) by seizing control of their online accounts. The movie leaves off (spoiler ahead) with CW marooned on an uninhabited island near the coast of Thailand, after her latest target, Madison (Emily Tennant), turns the tables against her.

This lends 2025's Influencers some early ambiguity, when returning filmmaker Kurtis David Harder picks up with CW happily living with her girlfriend Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. On a journey marking their one-year anniversary, British influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) catches CW’s eye and anger.

CW remarks to Diane that a person should try stranding a device-obsessed influencer in a place without any devices and see if they can survive. Are we witnessing an origin-story prequel? Was CW radicalized by seeing the special treatment given to one fame-seeker?

Evolving Viewpoints and International Chases

The narrative viewpoint changes multiple times, eventually clarifying those introductory moments' place in the timeline. Harder catches up with Madison, who has been cleared of carrying out CW's offenses, but still faces suspicion regarding her version of what happened, including the killing of her boyfriend. The film also follows Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), living in Bali and trying to juice his career as part of a conservative-influencer power couple alongside Ariana (Veronica Long), although his chosen platform involves masculine-focused livestreams, rather than the Instagram photos that typically attract CW's interest.

Naud remains terrifically magnetic in her role, a role that appears especially tailor-made to her strengths. (She also designed CW's striking wardrobe.) While the sequel’s focus tips heavily toward CW — the first film felt more equally divided between the two women — it still works as a tale of dueling investigators, as Madison and CW both use fake accounts, Insta-stalking, and an apparently limitless travel fund to pursue or evade one another. Of course, perhaps the unlimited budget isn’t necessary. Online personalities possess a knack for gaining access to luxurious locales at little cost, an ability that CW echoes through her more blatant scheming.

Ingenious Filmmaking and Visual Wanderlust

The filmmakers behind Influencers seem similarly ingenious about finding beautiful places to film, although they were likely more legitimate about it. Most of the film seems to be shot on location, providing it a real-world weight that remains even as numerous sequences involve a handful of actors of people looking at computer or phone screens.

It follows the same logic which allowed the Bond franchise look so persistently lavish for decades: Indeed, big action and visual effects can display a big budget, but just providing a travelogue of sorts to viewers also seems deeply filmic. This is particularly appropriate for a story so rooted in the coexisting surface-level allure and try-hard grind involved in producing envy-inducing online content.

All of the characters in Bali, like those staying in Thailand in the original, appear to enjoy access to unbelievably stylish modern bungalows; there are movies concerning beach rescuers that don’t show off as much aerial pool footage. The characters must believably occupy these lush, far-flung locations to highlight the uneasy irony of how frequently each person — even the woman exacting revenge on the influencers’ narcissistic falseness — nevertheless devotes much time in the glow of their screens.

Balanced Depictions and Digital-Age Suspense

Simultaneously, the director has not crafted a screed against the emptiness of online fame. Though it is gratifying to see CW manipulate various online personalities, and a Hitchcockian sense of alignment allows us to hope she doesn’t get caught, the filmmaker is somewhat sympathetic to the major influencer characters. Previously, he tapped into the isolation Madison felt while on supposedly dream getaways. In this film, Harder seems to trust that merely watching Jacob in action will make it clear that he’s peddling false masculinity to other doofuses; he avoids caricaturing the character further. He even gives Jacob a degree of respect by showing his genuine loyalty to his partner; he’s a hypocrite, but Ariana is a collaborator in his double standards, not a victim by it.

The other side of this balanced approach means it can sometimes appear that he’s nodding at bits of modern online life without investigating them further. This is particularly evident regarding how he brings AI into the story, an intriguing development that lacks the psychological edge it deserves. The pluralized title of Influencers could offer fans of the first movie expectations of a larger-scale escalation, and the film does eventually provide that, with an appropriately chaotic climax. However, initially, it’s more like a sleek Hitchcock thriller than a wild-eyed, 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 content-churning influencers, online fraud, and exploitative travel, but the world itself is still here, for now.