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“The entire situation stinks like a cheap made-for-TV,” observes a cynical podcaster during the chilling follow-up Influencers. In the moment, his tone is manipulatively dismissive toward an interviewee with an outlandish story he previously claimed he believed. But his assessment of what’s happening on screen isn’t wrong. Superficially, a pair of streaming movies chronicling a woman who insinuates herself into the lives of social media stars before killing them feels like the 21st-century equivalent of a lurid yet network-approved Movie of the Week. The wild thing about Influencers remains just how superior it proves to be compared to much of the competition, regardless of where you watch it. It’s the kind of suspense film that should give other movies a serious bout of FOMO.

Revisiting the First Film and Setting the Stage

The 2022 film Influencer follows the mysterious CW (Cassandra Naud) as she quietly chooses traveling alone influencer targets, lures them to their doom, and covers up those deaths (for a time) by taking control of their socials. The movie concludes (spoiler ahead) with CW marooned on an uninhabited island near the coast of Thailand, after her latest target, Madison (Emily Tennant), reverses their roles against her.

This provides the 2025 Influencers a degree of mystery, when returning writer-director Kurtis David Harder resumes with CW happily living with her girlfriend Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. During a trip marking the couple’s first anniversary, UK-based influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) catches CW's attention and anger.

CW remarks to her partner that someone should try stranding a phone-addicted online personality somewhere with no technology and see whether they can make it. Are we witnessing an origin-story prequel? Was CW radicalized after witnessing the preferential treatment afforded one fame-seeker?

Shifting Perspectives and International Chases

The story’s perspective changes multiple times, eventually clarifying those introductory moments' place in the timeline. The story revisits Madison, now cleared of carrying out CW's offenses, yet still encounters doubt regarding her version of the events, which includes the killing of Madison’s 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 with Ariana (Veronica Long), though his preferred medium is bro-heavy streams, rather than the Instagram photos that normally attract CW’s attention.

Naud remains immensely captivating in the part, which seems especially custom-fit to her strengths. (She even created CW's eye-catching outfits.) While the sequel’s focus tips heavily toward CW — the original felt more equally divided between her and Madison — it still works as a tale of rival investigators, with both women both use fake accounts, social media surveillance, and a seemingly limitless travel fund to chase or evade one another. Of course, perhaps the unlimited budget isn’t necessary. Online personalities possess a talent for getting to explore luxurious locales at little cost, a skill that CW echoes through her more blatant scheming.

Ingenious Filmmaking and Visual Wanderlust

The creative team for Influencers appear equally ingenious in locating beautiful places to visit, though they were presumably less nefarious in their methods. The vast majority of the movie appears to be filmed in real places, giving it an authentic gravity that lingers even as numerous sequences consist of a relatively small cast of people looking at computer or phone screens.

It follows the same logic which allowed the Bond franchise appear so consistently opulent over the years: Yes, explosive action and visual effects can display large spending, but simply offering a kind of visual tour for the audience also seems inherently cinematic. This is especially fitting for a story so dependent on the coexisting surface-level allure and desperate hustle involved in producing envy-inducing online content.

Every character visiting Bali, similar to those staying in Thailand in the first film, appear to enjoy entry to impossibly chic modern bungalows; there are movies concerning beach rescuers which don't feature as much overhead swimming-pool video. The characters have to convincingly inhabit these luxurious, far-flung locations to highlight the uncomfortable paradox of how often each person — even the woman exacting revenge upon the online stars' self-centered phoniness — nonetheless devotes much time under the light of their screens.

Nuanced Portrayals and Digital-Age Suspense

At the same time, the director has not crafted a rant against the emptiness of the influencer industry. Though it is gratifying to see CW exploit various online personalities, and a Hitchcockian sense of alignment allows us to hope she doesn’t get caught, Harder is somewhat understanding of the key influencer figures. Previously, he keyed into the isolation Madison felt while on ostensibly dream getaways. Here, the director appears confident that just observing Jacob in action will make it clear that he is selling snake-oil masculinity to other gullible men; he resists caricaturing the character. He even gives Jacob a degree of respect through depicting his genuine loyalty to his partner; he’s a hypocrite, yet Ariana is a collaborator in his hypocrisy, not someone exploited of it.

The flip side of Harder’s even-keeled presentation means it may occasionally seem that he is acknowledging elements of modern online life without deeply exploring them. This is especially true of the way he introduces artificial intelligence into the plot, a fascinating turn that lacks the psychosexual kick it deserves. The retitled sequel for the film might give fans of the first movie hope for an Aliens-style escalation, and the film ultimately delivers that, with an appropriately chaotic climax. But before that, it’s more like a polished Hitchcock thriller than a frenzied, tech-addled De Palma-style shocker. Influencers’ heavy use of actual places may also be what prevents it from coming across like pure nightmare fuel. The world may be overrun with content-churning influencers, online fraud, and self-serving tourism, but reality itself remains present, at least for now.