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“This whole affair smells like a cheap made-for-TV,” states an opportunistic podcaster midway through the chilling follow-up Influencers. At that point, his tone is dismissive in a calculated way of a guest whose outlandish story he previously said he trusted. Yet his assessment of the events on screen isn’t wrong. Superficially, two streaming movies chronicling a young woman who worms her way into the lives of social media stars before killing them seems like the 21st-century equivalent of a lurid but network-approved weekly TV movie. The wild thing about Influencers is just how superior it proves to be than plenty of the competition, regardless of where you watch it. It’s the kind of suspense film capable of giving its peers a bad case of FOMO.

Recapping the Original and Setting the Stage

The 2022 film Influencer follows the enigmatic CW (Cassandra Naud) while she quietly chooses solo-traveling influencer targets, entices them to their deaths, and covers up those murders (at least temporarily) by taking control of their online accounts. The film leaves off (spoiler ahead) with CW marooned on a deserted island near the coast of Thailand, after her latest target, Madison (Emily Tennant), turns the tables on her.

This provides 2025's Influencers a degree of ambiguity, as returning writer-director Kurtis David Harder picks up with the character CW happily living alongside her partner Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. During a trip to celebrate the couple’s first anniversary, UK-based influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) catches CW's attention and anger.

CW remarks to Diane that a person ought to attempt stranding a phone-addicted online personality in a place with no technology and see if they can survive. Are we witnessing a backstory prequel? Was CW radicalized by seeing the special treatment given to a single fame-seeker?

Evolving Viewpoints and Global Pursuits

The narrative viewpoint changes multiple times, ultimately revealing those introductory moments' chronological position. The story revisits Madison, now exonerated for committing CW's offenses, yet still encounters suspicion over her version of what happened, which includes the killing of her boyfriend. The film also follows Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), based in Bali and trying to juice his career as half of a conservative-influencer duo alongside Ariana (Veronica Long), though his chosen platform involves masculine-focused livestreams, rather than the Instagram photos that normally attract CW's interest.

The actor continues to be terrifically magnetic in her role, which seems especially tailor-made for her talents. (She even created CW's eye-catching wardrobe.) Although the follow-up's screentime balance leans heavily into CW — the original seemed more balanced between her and Madison — it still works as a story of rival amateur detectives, with both women both use fake accounts, Insta-stalking, and a seemingly unlimited travel budget to chase or evade each other. Then again, maybe the unlimited budget isn’t necessary. Influencers have a talent for getting to explore luxurious locales at little cost, an ability which CW mirrors with her more overt scamming.

Resourceful Production and Cinematic Travelogue

The creative team for Influencers appear equally resourceful in locating beautiful places to film, though they were presumably more legitimate in their methods. Most of the movie seems to be shot on location, providing it a real-world weight that remains even when numerous sequences consist of a handful of actors of people looking at computer or phone screens.

It follows the same logic that made the James Bond movies appear so persistently lavish for decades: Yes, big action and special effects can display large spending, however simply offering a kind of visual tour to viewers also feels inherently cinematic. It’s also especially fitting for a story so rooted in the coexisting surface-level allure and desperate hustle involved in producing envy-inducing online content.

All of the characters in Bali, similar to those staying in Thailand in the original, appear to enjoy access to impossibly chic contemporary villas; there are movies concerning beach rescuers which don't feature this much overhead swimming-pool video. The characters have to convincingly occupy these luxurious, far-flung locations to highlight the uneasy irony of how frequently each person — even the woman wreaking vengeance on the influencers’ narcissistic falseness — nonetheless spends plenty of time in the glow of their devices.

Balanced Depictions and Tech-Savvy Tension

Simultaneously, the director has not crafted a rant against the emptiness of the influencer industry. While it can be gratifying to see CW manipulate different internet celebrities, and a sense reminiscent of Hitchcock of alignment lets us to wish she doesn’t get caught, Harder is relatively understanding of the key influencer figures. Previously, he keyed into the isolation Madison experienced during ostensibly dream getaways. Here, the director appears confident that merely watching Jacob in action will reveal that he’s peddling false masculinity to other gullible men; he resists turning into a caricature the character. He even grants Jacob a degree of respect through depicting his genuine loyalty to his partner; he’s a hypocrite, but Ariana is a collaborator in his hypocrisy, not someone exploited by it.

The other side of this balanced approach means it may occasionally seem that he’s nodding at elements of contemporary digital culture without investigating them further. This is particularly evident of the way he brings AI into the story, a fascinating turn which misses the psychosexual kick it deserves. The pluralized title of Influencers might give devotees of the original expectations of a larger-scale ante-upping, and the movie does eventually provide that, with a suitably wild final act. However, initially, it resembles more a polished Alfred Hitchcock movie than a wild-eyed, tech-addled Brian De Palma thriller. Influencers’ extensive use of real-world locations may also be what keeps it from coming across like utter horror. The world may be overrun with always-online creators, online fraud, and self-serving tourism, but reality itself remains present, at least for now.