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“This whole affair reeks like a cheap TV movie,” remarks an opportunistic podcaster during the chilling follow-up Influencers. In the moment, he’s being manipulatively dismissive toward an interviewee whose outlandish story he once said he trusted. But his assessment of what’s happening in the movie isn't inaccurate. On its face, a pair of films on demand chronicling a young woman who insinuates herself into the worlds of social media stars and then murders them feels like the 21st-century equivalent of a lurid but cable-ready weekly TV movie. The surprising aspect regarding Influencers is just how superior it proves to be than plenty of the competition, irrespective of screen size. It is precisely the suspense film capable of giving other movies a bad case of FOMO.

Revisiting the First Film and Establishing the Scene

2022’s Influencer tracks the enigmatic CW (Cassandra Naud) as she methodically selects traveling alone social media targets, entices them to their doom, and covers up those deaths (at least temporarily) by taking control of their socials. The film leaves off (spoiler ahead) with CW stranded on an uninhabited island off the coast of Thailand, following her latest target, Madison (Emily Tennant), reverses their roles on her.

This lends 2025's Influencers a degree of ambiguity, when returning filmmaker Kurtis David Harder picks up with the character CW contentedly residing alongside her partner Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. On a journey to celebrate their one-year anniversary, British influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) draws CW's attention and anger.

CW comments to Diane that someone should try leaving a phone-addicted influencer in a place with no technology and see whether they can make it. Are we witnessing a backstory prequel? Was CW radicalized after witnessing the preferential treatment afforded one clout-chaser?

Shifting Perspectives and Global Pursuits

The story’s perspective changes multiple times, eventually clarifying those introductory moments' place in the timeline. The story revisits Madison, who has been cleared of committing CW's offenses, yet still encounters doubt regarding her recounting of what happened, including the killing of her boyfriend. We also follow Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), based in Bali and trying to juice his career as part of a right-wing-influencer power couple with Ariana (Veronica Long), though his preferred medium involves masculine-focused livestreams, as opposed to the curated images that normally capture CW’s attention.

The actor continues to be immensely captivating in the part, which seems especially tailor-made for her talents. (She even created CW's striking outfits.) While the sequel’s screentime balance tips heavily toward CW — the original felt more equally divided between her and Madison — it still works as a tale of dueling amateur detectives, with both women employ fake accounts, social media surveillance, and an apparently unlimited travel budget to chase or evade one another. Of course, perhaps the vast resources isn’t necessary. Influencers have a talent for gaining access to luxurious locales at little cost, an ability which CW mirrors through her more blatant scamming.

Resourceful Production and Visual Wanderlust

The creative team for Influencers seem similarly resourceful about finding stunning locations to film, though they were presumably less nefarious in their methods. Most of the film seems to be filmed in real places, giving it a real-world weight that remains even when many scenes consist of a handful of actors of characters looking at computer or phone screens.

It’s the same principle which allowed the Bond franchise look so persistently lavish over the years: Indeed, big action and visual effects can display large spending, however simply offering a kind of visual tour for the audience also feels inherently cinematic. It’s also especially fitting for a narrative so rooted in the coexisting superficial glamour and desperate hustle involved in producing envy-inducing online content.

All of the characters visiting Bali, similar to those staying in Thailand in the original, appear to enjoy access to impossibly chic contemporary villas; there are movies about lifeguards that don’t show off as much overhead swimming-pool video. These individuals must believably inhabit these luxurious, remote places to highlight the uneasy irony of how often each person — even the woman exacting revenge on the influencers’ narcissistic falseness — nonetheless spends plenty of time under the light of their screens.

Balanced Depictions and Tech-Savvy Tension

Simultaneously, the director has not crafted a rant targeting the emptiness of the influencer industry. Though it can be gratifying to see CW manipulate various online personalities, and a sense reminiscent of Hitchcock of alignment lets us to hope she doesn’t get caught, Harder is relatively understanding of the major influencer characters. Previously, he tapped into the isolation Madison felt while on supposedly dream getaways. Here, Harder seems to trust that just observing Jacob at work will reveal that he is selling false masculinity to other gullible men; he resists caricaturing the character further. He even grants Jacob a degree of respect through depicting his true devotion to his girlfriend; he is two-faced, but Ariana is a collaborator in his double standards, not a victim of it.

The flip side of this balanced approach means it may occasionally seem that he’s nodding at bits of modern online life without deeply exploring them further. This is particularly evident of the way he introduces artificial intelligence into the story, an intriguing development which misses the psychological edge it deserves. The pluralized title for the film might give fans of the first movie expectations of a larger-scale ante-upping, and the movie ultimately delivers that, with an appropriately chaotic climax. However, initially, it resembles more a sleek Alfred Hitchcock movie than an wild-eyed, technology-obsessed Brian De Palma thriller. Influencers’ heavy use of actual places might also be what prevents it from seeming like pure nightmare fuel. The world may be overrun with always-online creators, online fraud, and exploitative travel, but the world itself is still here, for now.