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“This whole affair reeks like a cheap made-for-TV,” remarks a cynical podcaster during the chilling follow-up Influencers. At that point, his tone is manipulatively dismissive toward an interviewee whose bizarre tale he once claimed he believed. Yet his assessment of what’s happening on screen isn’t wrong. On its face, two films on demand about a young woman who insinuates herself into the worlds of social media stars before killing them seems like a modern-day version of a tawdry but network-approved Movie of the Week. The wild thing about Influencers is how much better it proves to be compared to much of its competition, regardless of screen size. It’s the kind of suspense film that should give other movies a bad case of FOMO.

Revisiting the Original and Establishing the Scene

The 2022 film Influencer follows the enigmatic CW (Cassandra Naud) while she methodically selects solo-traveling social media targets, entices them to their deaths, and covers up those murders (for a time) by seizing control of their socials. The movie leaves off (spoiler ahead) with CW stranded on an uninhabited island near the coast of Thailand, following her latest target, Madison (Emily Tennant), reverses their roles on her.

This lends the 2025 Influencers a degree of ambiguity, when returning writer-director Kurtis David Harder resumes with the character CW contentedly residing alongside her partner Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. On a journey marking the couple’s first anniversary, British influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) draws CW’s eye and ire.

CW remarks to her partner that a person should try stranding 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 after witnessing the special treatment afforded a single clout-chaser?

Shifting Perspectives and Global Pursuits

The narrative viewpoint shifts several more times, eventually clarifying those early scenes’ place in the timeline. The story revisits Madison, now exonerated for committing CW’s crimes, yet still encounters doubt over her recounting of what happened, including the killing of Madison’s boyfriend. The film also follows Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), living in Bali and trying to boost his profile as half of a conservative-influencer power couple alongside Ariana (Veronica Long), although his chosen platform involves masculine-focused livestreams, as opposed to the curated images that typically capture CW’s attention.

The actor continues to be terrifically magnetic in the part, a role that appears especially custom-fit for her talents. (She even created CW's striking outfits.) Although the sequel’s screentime balance leans heavily into CW — the first film felt more equally divided between her and Madison — it still works as a story of rival amateur detectives, with both women both use fabricated profiles, social media surveillance, and a seemingly unlimited travel budget to chase or evade each other. Then again, maybe the unlimited budget aren't needed. Influencers have a talent for getting to explore luxurious locales at little cost, a skill which CW mirrors with her more overt scheming.

Ingenious Filmmaking and Visual Wanderlust

The filmmakers behind Influencers seem similarly ingenious about finding stunning locations to visit, though they were likely more legitimate in their methods. The vast majority of the film seems to be shot on location, giving it an authentic gravity that remains even when numerous sequences involve a handful of actors of people staring at digital devices.

It follows the same logic that made the James Bond movies appear so persistently lavish over the years: Yes, big action and visual effects can show off a big budget, but simply offering a travelogue of sorts to viewers also seems inherently cinematic. This is particularly appropriate for a story so rooted in the simultaneous superficial glamour and try-hard grind of creating jealousy-worthy digital content.

Every character in Bali, like 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. The characters must believably occupy these lush, far-flung locations to highlight the uncomfortable paradox of how frequently each person — including the woman wreaking vengeance upon the online stars' narcissistic falseness — nevertheless spends plenty of time in the glow of their screens.

Nuanced Portrayals and Tech-Savvy Tension

Simultaneously, Harder hasn’t authored a screed against the vacuousness of online fame. While it can be gratifying to watch CW manipulate different internet celebrities, and a sense reminiscent of Hitchcock of alignment lets us to wish she doesn’t get caught, the filmmaker is relatively sympathetic to the key influencer figures. Previously, he keyed into the isolation Madison experienced during ostensibly envy-worthy vacations. In this film, the director appears confident that just observing Jacob in action will reveal that he is selling snake-oil masculinity to other doofuses; he avoids turning into a caricature the character. He even grants Jacob a measure of dignity by showing his true devotion to his girlfriend; he’s a hypocrite, but Ariana is a partner in his hypocrisy, not someone exploited by it.

The flip side of Harder’s even-keeled presentation is that it may occasionally seem as if he is acknowledging elements of modern online life without deeply exploring them. This is particularly evident regarding how he introduces artificial intelligence into the story, an intriguing development that lacks the psychosexual kick it deserves. The retitled sequel of Influencers could offer fans of the first movie hope for a larger-scale escalation, and the movie ultimately delivers exactly that, with a suitably wild final act. However, initially, it resembles more a sleek Hitchcock thriller than a frenzied, tech-addled Brian De Palma thriller. Influencers’ heavy use of actual places might also be what prevents it from coming across like utter horror. Our society might be saturated with always-online creators, online fraud, and self-serving tourism, but reality itself is still here, at least for now.