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“The entire situation stinks of a bad made-for-TV,” remarks an opportunistic commentator during the chilling follow-up Influencers. At that point, he’s being manipulatively dismissive toward an interviewee with an outlandish story he once claimed he believed. Yet his description of what’s happening in the movie isn’t wrong. Superficially, two films on demand about a woman who worms her way into the worlds of online influencers and then murders them feels like a modern-day version of a tawdry yet network-approved weekly TV movie. The surprising aspect about Influencers remains just how superior it proves to be compared to much of the competition, irrespective of where you watch it. It’s the kind of suspense film capable of giving its peers a serious bout of FOMO.

Revisiting the First Film and Setting the Stage

2022’s Influencer follows the mysterious CW (Cassandra Naud) as she quietly chooses solo-traveling social media targets, entices them to their doom, and conceals those deaths (for a time) by taking control of their socials. The movie leaves off (spoiler ahead) with CW stranded on an uninhabited island off the coast of Thailand, after her most recent mark, Madison (Emily Tennant), turns the tables against her.

This provides 2025's Influencers a degree of ambiguity, when returning writer-director Kurtis David Harder resumes with CW contentedly residing with her girlfriend Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. On a journey marking the couple’s one-year anniversary, UK-based influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) catches CW's attention and ire.

CW remarks to Diane that someone ought to attempt stranding a device-obsessed influencer somewhere without any devices and see whether they can survive. Are we witnessing a backstory prequel? Was CW radicalized after witnessing the special treatment afforded a single fame-seeker?

Shifting Perspectives and Global Pursuits

The narrative viewpoint shifts several more times, eventually clarifying those early scenes’ place in the timeline. Harder catches up with Madison, now exonerated for carrying out CW's offenses, but still faces suspicion regarding her version of the events, which includes the killing of Madison’s boyfriend. We also follow Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), living in Bali and trying to juice his career as half of a right-wing-influencer duo with Ariana (Veronica Long), though his preferred medium is bro-heavy streams, rather than the curated images that typically capture CW's interest.

The actor continues to be terrifically magnetic in the part, which seems particularly tailor-made to her strengths. (She even created CW's striking wardrobe.) Although the sequel’s screentime balance leans heavily into CW — the original felt more equally divided between her and Madison — it still works as a story of rival amateur detectives, with both women employ fake accounts, social media surveillance, and an apparently unlimited travel budget to pursue or evade one another. Then again, perhaps the vast resources isn’t necessary. Influencers have a knack for getting to explore luxurious locales at little cost, a skill which CW mirrors with her more overt scamming.

Ingenious Filmmaking and Cinematic Travelogue

The creative team for Influencers seem similarly ingenious about finding stunning locations to film, although they were likely more legitimate in their methods. Most of the film appears to be shot on location, providing it a real-world weight that remains even as many scenes involve a relatively small cast of characters looking at computer or phone screens.

It’s the same principle which allowed the Bond franchise look so consistently opulent for decades: Yes, explosive action and visual effects can show off large spending, however just providing a travelogue of sorts to viewers also feels deeply filmic. It’s also particularly appropriate for a narrative so rooted in the coexisting surface-level allure and try-hard grind of creating envy-inducing online content.

Every character in Bali, like those staying in Thailand in the first film, appear to enjoy access to impossibly chic contemporary villas; films exist concerning beach rescuers which don't feature this much overhead swimming-pool video. These individuals must believably inhabit these luxurious, far-flung locations to highlight the uncomfortable paradox of how often each person — including the woman exacting revenge on the influencers’ self-centered phoniness — nonetheless spends plenty of time under the light of their screens.

Balanced Depictions and Tech-Savvy Tension

At the same time, Harder hasn’t authored a screed targeting the vacuousness of online fame. While it is gratifying to watch CW manipulate different internet celebrities, and a Hitchcockian sense of identification allows us to wish she evades capture, Harder is somewhat understanding of the major influencer characters. In the first movie, he keyed into the loneliness Madison felt during supposedly dream getaways. Here, the director appears confident that merely watching Jacob in action will make it clear that he’s peddling snake-oil masculinity to other gullible men; he resists turning into a caricature the character further. He even gives Jacob a measure of dignity through depicting his true devotion to his partner; he is two-faced, yet Ariana is a collaborator in his hypocrisy, not someone exploited by it.

The flip side of this balanced approach is that it may occasionally seem as if he is acknowledging bits of modern online life without deeply exploring them further. This is particularly evident regarding how he brings AI into the story, an intriguing development which misses the psychological edge it should have. The pluralized title for the film might give fans of the first movie hope for a larger-scale ante-upping, and the film ultimately delivers that, with a suitably chaotic climax. But before that, it’s more like a polished Alfred Hitchcock movie than an frenzied, tech-addled De Palma-style shocker. Influencers’ heavy use of actual places may also be what keeps it from coming across like utter horror. The world may be overrun with always-online creators, online fraud, and exploitative travel, but reality itself remains present, for now.