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“The entire situation stinks like a cheap TV movie,” observes an opportunistic commentator during the chilling follow-up Influencers. In the moment, he’s being dismissive in a calculated way toward an interviewee with an bizarre tale he once claimed he believed. Yet his description of what’s happening in the movie isn’t wrong. Superficially, two streaming movies about a young woman who insinuates herself into the worlds of social media stars and then murders them feels like a modern-day version of a lurid yet cable-ready weekly TV movie. The surprising aspect about Influencers is how much better it is than plenty of the competition, regardless 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

2022’s Influencer follows the enigmatic CW (Cassandra Naud) as she methodically selects solo-traveling social media targets, lures them to their deaths, and conceals those murders (for a time) by taking control of their socials. The movie leaves off (spoiler ahead) with CW marooned on a deserted island near the coast of Thailand, after her most recent mark, Madison (Emily Tennant), turns the tables against her.

This lends the 2025 Influencers some early mystery, as returning writer-director Kurtis David Harder picks up with the character CW happily living with her girlfriend Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. During a trip to celebrate the couple’s one-year anniversary, British influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) draws CW's attention and ire.

CW remarks to Diane that someone should try leaving a device-obsessed influencer somewhere with no technology to see whether they can survive. Are we witnessing an origin-story prequel? Was CW radicalized after witnessing the special treatment afforded a single fame-seeker?

Shifting Perspectives and Global Pursuits

The narrative viewpoint changes multiple times, eventually clarifying those introductory moments' chronological position. Harder catches up with Madison, who has been exonerated for carrying out CW’s crimes, but still faces doubt regarding her recounting of the events, including the murder of Madison’s boyfriend. The film also follows Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), living in Bali and trying to boost his profile as half of a right-wing-influencer duo alongside Ariana (Veronica Long), though his chosen platform is bro-heavy streams, rather than the Instagram photos that normally attract CW’s attention.

The actor continues to be immensely captivating in her role, which seems especially tailor-made for her talents. (She also designed CW's eye-catching wardrobe.) Although the follow-up's screentime balance tips heavily toward CW — the original seemed more balanced between the two women — it still works as a story of rival investigators, with both women both use fabricated profiles, social media surveillance, and a seemingly unlimited travel budget to pursue or evade each other. Of course, maybe the unlimited budget aren't needed. Influencers have a knack for gaining access to luxurious locales without paying much, an ability that CW echoes through her more blatant scamming.

Ingenious Filmmaking and Cinematic Travelogue

The creative team for Influencers seem similarly resourceful in locating stunning locations to film, though they were presumably more legitimate in their methods. Most of the film appears to be shot on location, giving it a real-world weight that lingers even when numerous sequences involve a relatively small cast of characters looking at computer or phone screens.

It follows the same logic that made the James Bond movies appear so consistently opulent for decades: Indeed, big action and special effects can show off large spending, however simply offering a kind of visual tour for the audience also feels deeply filmic. This is especially fitting for a narrative so rooted in the coexisting surface-level allure and try-hard grind involved in producing envy-inducing digital content.

Every character in Bali, like those staying in Thailand in the first film, appear to enjoy entry to unbelievably stylish contemporary villas; there are movies about lifeguards which don't feature this much aerial pool video. These individuals must believably occupy these luxurious, remote places to highlight the uneasy irony of how frequently everyone — even the woman wreaking vengeance upon the online stars' narcissistic falseness — nonetheless devotes much time in the glow of their screens.

Nuanced Portrayals and Tech-Savvy Tension

At the same time, Harder hasn’t authored a screed against the emptiness of the influencer industry. While it is satisfying to watch CW exploit various online personalities, and a sense reminiscent of Hitchcock of identification allows us to wish she evades capture, the filmmaker is somewhat sympathetic to the key influencer figures. In the first movie, he keyed into the isolation Madison experienced while on ostensibly dream getaways. Here, the director appears confident that just observing Jacob at work will make it clear that he’s peddling snake-oil masculinity to other gullible men; he avoids turning into a caricature the character further. He even gives Jacob a measure of dignity by showing his true devotion to his girlfriend; he’s a hypocrite, but Ariana is a partner in his double standards, not someone exploited of it.

The flip side of this balanced approach means it can sometimes appear as if he’s nodding at elements of contemporary digital culture without investigating them. This is particularly evident of the way he introduces artificial intelligence into the story, a fascinating turn that lacks the psychosexual kick it deserves. The pluralized title for the film might give fans of the first movie hope for an Aliens-style ante-upping, and the film does eventually provide that, with an appropriately wild final act. However, initially, it resembles more a polished Hitchcock thriller than a wild-eyed, technology-obsessed Brian De Palma thriller. Influencers’ heavy use of actual places may also be what keeps it from coming across like pure nightmare fuel. Our society might be saturated with always-online creators, digital deception, and self-serving tourism, but the world itself remains present, for now.