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“Everything about this stinks of a bad made-for-TV,” states a cynical podcaster midway through the chilling follow-up Influencers. In the moment, his tone is manipulatively dismissive toward an interviewee whose bizarre tale he previously claimed he believed. Yet his assessment of what’s happening in the movie isn't inaccurate. Superficially, two streaming movies chronicling a young woman who insinuates herself into the lives of online influencers before killing them feels like the 21st-century equivalent of a lurid yet network-approved weekly TV movie. The wild thing about Influencers remains how much better it proves to be compared to much of the competition, irrespective of screen size. It’s the kind of suspense film capable of giving its peers a bad case of FOMO.

Recapping the Original and Establishing the Scene

The 2022 film Influencer follows the enigmatic CW (Cassandra Naud) while she methodically selects traveling alone social media targets, lures them to their deaths, and covers up those deaths (for a time) by taking control of their online accounts. The film concludes (spoiler ahead) with CW marooned on a deserted island off the coast of Thailand, after her latest target, Madison (Emily Tennant), turns the tables on her.

This provides the 2025 Influencers some early mystery, as returning writer-director Kurtis David Harder resumes with the character CW happily living alongside her partner Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. On a journey marking their first anniversary, UK-based influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) catches CW’s eye and anger.

CW comments to her partner that someone ought to attempt stranding a device-obsessed influencer in a place with no technology and see whether they can survive. Are we witnessing an origin-story prequel? Did CW become extremist after witnessing the preferential treatment afforded one fame-seeker?

Evolving Viewpoints and Global Pursuits

The narrative viewpoint changes multiple times, eventually clarifying those introductory moments' place in the timeline. Harder catches up with Madison, who has been exonerated for carrying out CW's offenses, but still faces suspicion over her version of the events, including the killing of Madison’s boyfriend. We also follow Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), based in Bali and trying to juice his career as half of a conservative-influencer duo with Ariana (Veronica Long), although his preferred medium involves masculine-focused livestreams, rather than the curated images that normally capture CW’s attention.

Naud remains immensely captivating in her role, a role that appears especially custom-fit to her strengths. (She also designed CW's eye-catching wardrobe.) Although the follow-up's screentime balance leans heavily into CW — the first film felt more equally divided between the two women — it still functions as a tale of rival investigators, with both women employ fake accounts, social media surveillance, and a seemingly limitless travel fund to chase and/or escape one another. Of course, maybe the vast resources isn’t necessary. Influencers have a talent for getting to explore posh places at little cost, a skill that CW echoes with her more overt scheming.

Ingenious Filmmaking and Cinematic Travelogue

The filmmakers behind Influencers appear equally resourceful about finding stunning locations to film, though they were presumably less nefarious in their methods. Most of the movie appears to be shot on location, giving it a real-world weight that lingers even as many scenes involve a relatively small cast of characters staring at computer or phone screens.

It follows the same logic that made the Bond franchise look so persistently lavish for decades: Indeed, explosive action and visual effects can show off a big budget, however simply offering a kind of visual tour for the audience also seems inherently cinematic. This is especially fitting for a narrative so dependent on the coexisting surface-level allure and desperate hustle of creating envy-inducing online content.

Every character in Bali, like those who were in Thailand in the first film, seem to have access to unbelievably stylish modern bungalows; films exist about lifeguards which don't feature as much overhead swimming-pool footage. These individuals must believably occupy these luxurious, remote places to highlight the uncomfortable paradox of how often each person — even the woman exacting revenge on the influencers’ self-centered phoniness — nevertheless spends plenty of time under the light of their devices.

Balanced Depictions and Tech-Savvy Tension

Simultaneously, the director has not crafted a screed against the emptiness of online fame. Though it is satisfying to see CW manipulate various online personalities, and a Hitchcockian sense of alignment lets us to hope she evades capture, the filmmaker is relatively sympathetic to the major influencer characters. Previously, he keyed into the isolation Madison experienced during supposedly envy-worthy vacations. In this film, Harder seems to trust that just observing Jacob at work will make it clear that he’s peddling snake-oil masculinity to other gullible men; he resists caricaturing the character further. He even gives Jacob a degree of respect by showing his true devotion to his girlfriend; he is two-faced, but Ariana is a collaborator in his double standards, not someone exploited of it.

The flip 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 especially true regarding how he introduces artificial intelligence into the plot, an intriguing development that lacks 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 exactly that, with an appropriately chaotic climax. However, initially, it resembles more a sleek Hitchcock thriller than a wild-eyed, technology-obsessed Brian De Palma thriller. Influencers’ extensive use of actual places may also be what prevents it from coming across like utter horror. The world might be saturated with content-churning influencers, digital deception, and self-serving tourism, but reality itself remains present, for now.