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“Everything about this stinks of a cheap TV movie,” observes a cynical podcaster midway through the chilling follow-up Influencers. In the moment, his tone is manipulatively dismissive of a guest with an bizarre tale he once said he trusted. Yet his assessment of the events in the movie isn't inaccurate. Superficially, a pair of films on demand chronicling a young woman who worms her way into the lives of social media stars before killing them feels like the 21st-century equivalent of a lurid but network-approved weekly TV movie. The surprising aspect about Influencers remains how much better it proves to be than plenty of its competition, irrespective of where you watch it. It is precisely the suspense film capable of giving other movies a bad case of FOMO.

Recapping the Original and Establishing the Scene

The 2022 film Influencer follows the enigmatic CW (Cassandra Naud) as she methodically selects solo-traveling social media targets, entices them to their doom, and conceals those deaths (at least temporarily) by seizing control of their socials. The movie leaves off (spoiler ahead) with CW stranded on an uninhabited island near the coast of Thailand, after her most recent mark, Madison (Emily Tennant), reverses their roles against her.

This provides the 2025 Influencers some early mystery, when returning writer-director Kurtis David Harder resumes with the character CW happily living with her girlfriend Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. On a journey marking the couple’s one-year anniversary, British influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) catches CW's attention and anger.

CW remarks to her partner that someone should try leaving a phone-addicted online personality in a place without any devices to see if they can make it. Is this an origin-story prequel? Did CW become extremist by seeing the preferential treatment given to a single clout-chaser?

Evolving Viewpoints and International Chases

The narrative viewpoint shifts several more times, eventually clarifying those introductory moments' chronological position. Harder catches up with Madison, who has been exonerated for carrying out CW's offenses, but still faces doubt regarding her recounting of the events, which includes the murder of Madison’s boyfriend. The film also follows Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), based in Bali attempting to juice his career as half of a conservative-influencer power couple alongside Ariana (Veronica Long), although his chosen platform involves masculine-focused livestreams, rather than the curated images that normally attract CW’s attention.

Naud remains immensely captivating in her role, which seems particularly custom-fit for her talents. (She even created CW's striking outfits.) Although the follow-up's focus tips heavily toward CW — the original seemed more balanced between the two women — it still works as a tale of dueling investigators, with both women both use fabricated profiles, Insta-stalking, and a seemingly limitless travel fund to pursue and/or escape each other. Of course, maybe the unlimited budget aren't needed. Online personalities possess a talent for getting to explore posh places without paying much, a skill that CW echoes with her more overt scamming.

Ingenious Filmmaking and Visual Wanderlust

The filmmakers behind Influencers appear equally resourceful about finding stunning locations to film, though they were likely more legitimate about it. The vast majority of the movie appears to be filmed in real places, providing it a real-world weight that remains even as numerous sequences consist of a relatively small cast of people staring at digital devices.

It’s the same principle that made the James Bond movies appear so persistently lavish for decades: Indeed, big action and visual effects can show off a big budget, but simply offering a travelogue of sorts for the audience also seems inherently cinematic. It’s also especially fitting for a story so dependent on the simultaneous surface-level allure and desperate hustle of creating jealousy-worthy online content.

Every character visiting Bali, similar to those staying in Thailand in the first film, seem to have entry to impossibly chic contemporary villas; films exist about lifeguards which don't feature this much aerial pool footage. These individuals have to convincingly occupy these luxurious, far-flung locations to emphasize the uncomfortable paradox of how often everyone — including the woman exacting revenge upon the online stars' self-centered phoniness — nonetheless devotes much time under the light of their devices.

Nuanced Portrayals and Tech-Savvy Tension

Simultaneously, Harder hasn’t authored a rant against the emptiness of online fame. While it can be gratifying to see CW exploit various online personalities, and a Hitchcockian sense of identification lets us to hope she evades capture, the filmmaker is somewhat understanding of the key influencer figures. In the first movie, he tapped into the loneliness Madison experienced while on supposedly dream getaways. Here, Harder seems to trust that merely watching 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. He even grants Jacob a measure of dignity by showing his true devotion to his partner; he is two-faced, but Ariana is a collaborator in his double standards, not a victim by it.

The other side of this balanced approach is that it can sometimes appear as if he is acknowledging elements of contemporary digital culture without investigating them further. This is especially true of the way he introduces artificial intelligence into the plot, an intriguing development that lacks the psychological edge it should have. The pluralized title for the film could offer devotees of the original expectations of a larger-scale escalation, and the film does eventually provide that, with an appropriately chaotic climax. However, initially, it’s more like a sleek Hitchcock thriller than an wild-eyed, tech-addled De Palma-style shocker. 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 exploitative travel, but the world itself remains present, for now.