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“The entire situation stinks like a cheap made-for-TV,” states an opportunistic commentator midway through the chilling follow-up Influencers. At that point, his tone is dismissive in a calculated way of a guest whose outlandish story he previously claimed he believed. Yet his assessment of the events in the movie isn't inaccurate. On its face, a pair of films on demand chronicling a young woman who worms her way into the lives of online influencers before killing them seems like a modern-day version of a lurid yet network-approved weekly TV movie. The wild thing regarding Influencers is just how superior it is compared to much of the competition, regardless of screen size. It is precisely the suspense film capable of giving other movies a serious bout of FOMO.

Revisiting the Original and Setting the Stage

The 2022 film Influencer tracks the enigmatic CW (Cassandra Naud) while she methodically selects solo-traveling influencer targets, entices them to their doom, 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 near the coast of Thailand, following her latest target, Madison (Emily Tennant), reverses their roles against her.

This provides 2025's Influencers a degree of ambiguity, when returning filmmaker 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, UK-based influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) draws CW’s eye and ire.

CW remarks to Diane that a person ought to attempt leaving a device-obsessed online personality somewhere with no technology and see whether they can make it. Are we witnessing a backstory prequel? Did CW become extremist after witnessing the special treatment afforded one clout-chaser?

Shifting Perspectives and International Chases

The narrative viewpoint changes multiple times, eventually clarifying those introductory moments' place in the timeline. The story revisits Madison, who has been exonerated for carrying out CW's offenses, yet still encounters suspicion over her recounting of the events, which includes the murder of her boyfriend. The film also follows Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), living in Bali and trying to boost his profile as half of a conservative-influencer duo alongside Ariana (Veronica Long), although his chosen platform involves masculine-focused livestreams, rather than the Instagram photos that normally attract CW’s attention.

Naud remains terrifically magnetic in her role, a role that appears particularly custom-fit for her talents. (She even created CW's eye-catching outfits.) While the follow-up's focus leans heavily into CW — the original seemed more balanced between her and Madison — it still functions as a tale of dueling investigators, with both women both use fabricated profiles, Insta-stalking, and a seemingly limitless travel fund to pursue or evade one another. Then again, maybe the unlimited budget isn’t necessary. Online personalities possess a knack for getting to explore posh places without paying much, an ability which CW mirrors with her more overt scheming.

Ingenious Filmmaking and Visual Wanderlust

The creative team for Influencers seem similarly ingenious in locating beautiful places to film, though they were likely more legitimate about it. Most of the movie appears to be shot on location, giving it an authentic gravity that remains even when many scenes consist of a handful of actors of people staring at computer or phone screens.

It follows the same logic that made the Bond franchise appear so consistently opulent for decades: Indeed, explosive action and visual effects can display a big budget, however simply offering a travelogue of sorts to viewers also feels inherently cinematic. This is particularly appropriate for a narrative so dependent on the coexisting surface-level allure and try-hard grind involved in producing envy-inducing digital content.

All of the characters visiting Bali, like those who were in Thailand in the original, seem to have access to impossibly chic modern bungalows; films exist concerning beach rescuers that don’t show off this much aerial pool footage. These individuals have to convincingly inhabit these lush, remote places to highlight the uneasy irony of how often each person — including the woman exacting revenge on the influencers’ 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 targeting the vacuousness of online fame. Though it is gratifying to see CW exploit different internet celebrities, and a sense reminiscent of Hitchcock of alignment lets us to wish she evades capture, the filmmaker is somewhat sympathetic to the major influencer characters. In the first movie, he keyed into the loneliness Madison felt during ostensibly envy-worthy vacations. In this film, the director appears confident that just observing Jacob at work 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 measure of dignity by showing his true devotion to his partner; he’s a hypocrite, but Ariana is a partner in his double standards, not a victim by it.

The flip side of Harder’s even-keeled presentation is that it may occasionally seem that he is acknowledging bits of modern online life without investigating them. This is particularly evident of the way he introduces artificial intelligence into the story, an intriguing development that lacks the psychological edge it should have. The pluralized title for the film could offer fans of the first movie hope for a larger-scale ante-upping, and the movie ultimately delivers exactly that, with an appropriately wild final act. But before that, it’s more like a polished Alfred Hitchcock movie than a wild-eyed, technology-obsessed Brian De Palma thriller. Influencers’ heavy use of real-world locations may also be what prevents it from seeming like utter horror. Our society may be overrun with always-online creators, online fraud, and self-serving tourism, but reality itself is still here, for now.