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“The entire situation smells like a bad made-for-TV,” observes a cynical podcaster during the chilling follow-up Influencers. In the moment, his tone is manipulatively dismissive toward an interviewee whose bizarre tale he previously claimed he believed. Yet his assessment of what’s happening on screen isn’t wrong. On its face, a pair of streaming movies about a woman who worms her way into the worlds of social media stars and then murders them seems like the 21st-century equivalent of a lurid but network-approved weekly TV movie. The wild thing regarding Influencers is how much better it is than plenty of the competition, regardless of where you watch it. It’s the kind of suspense film that should give its peers a serious bout of FOMO.

Revisiting the First Film and Establishing the Scene

The 2022 film Influencer follows the enigmatic CW (Cassandra Naud) as she quietly chooses traveling alone influencer targets, entices them to their deaths, and conceals those murders (at least temporarily) by taking control of their online accounts. The film concludes (spoiler ahead) with CW marooned on an uninhabited island near the coast of Thailand, following her most recent mark, Madison (Emily Tennant), turns the tables against her.

This provides the 2025 Influencers some early mystery, as returning writer-director Kurtis David Harder resumes with the character CW happily living with her girlfriend Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. During a trip to celebrate their first anniversary, British influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) catches CW's attention and ire.

CW comments to Diane that someone should try leaving a device-obsessed online personality in a place without any devices and see if they can survive. Is this an origin-story prequel? Did CW become extremist after witnessing the special treatment given to a single clout-chaser?

Shifting Perspectives and International Chases

The narrative viewpoint shifts several more times, ultimately revealing those introductory moments' chronological position. The story revisits Madison, now cleared of committing CW's offenses, yet still encounters suspicion regarding her recounting of the events, including the killing of Madison’s boyfriend. We also follow Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), based in Bali attempting to boost his profile as half of a conservative-influencer duo alongside Ariana (Veronica Long), though his preferred medium involves masculine-focused livestreams, rather than the Instagram photos that typically capture CW’s attention.

The actor continues to be terrifically magnetic in the part, a role that appears particularly custom-fit for her talents. (She also designed CW's striking outfits.) While the sequel’s screentime balance tips heavily toward CW — the first film seemed more balanced between the two women — it still works as a story of dueling investigators, as Madison and CW both use fake accounts, Insta-stalking, and an apparently limitless travel fund to chase and/or escape one another. Then again, maybe the unlimited budget isn’t necessary. Online personalities possess a knack for getting to explore posh places at little cost, a skill which CW mirrors through her more blatant scamming.

Resourceful Production and Cinematic Travelogue

The creative team for Influencers appear equally ingenious about finding beautiful places to visit, 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 as numerous sequences involve a relatively small cast of people staring at digital devices.

It follows the same logic which allowed the Bond franchise appear so consistently opulent for decades: Indeed, big action and visual effects can display a big budget, but just providing a travelogue of sorts for the audience also seems inherently cinematic. It’s also particularly appropriate for a narrative so rooted in the coexisting superficial glamour and desperate hustle involved in producing envy-inducing digital content.

All of the characters in Bali, similar to those staying in Thailand in the first film, appear to enjoy entry to unbelievably stylish contemporary villas; there are movies about lifeguards that don’t show off this much aerial pool footage. These individuals must believably occupy these luxurious, far-flung locations to highlight the uncomfortable paradox of how often everyone — including the woman exacting revenge upon the online stars' self-centered phoniness — nevertheless devotes much time in the glow of their devices.

Balanced Depictions and Digital-Age Suspense

Simultaneously, the director has not crafted a screed against the emptiness of online fame. Though it can be gratifying to see CW exploit different internet celebrities, and a Hitchcockian sense of identification lets us to wish she evades capture, the filmmaker is relatively understanding of the key influencer figures. Previously, he tapped into the loneliness Madison felt during ostensibly dream getaways. Here, the director appears confident that merely watching Jacob in action will make it clear that he is selling snake-oil masculinity to other doofuses; he resists caricaturing the character. He even gives Jacob a measure of dignity by showing his genuine loyalty to his girlfriend; he’s a hypocrite, yet Ariana is a partner in his hypocrisy, not a victim of it.

The other side of Harder’s even-keeled presentation is that it can sometimes appear that he is acknowledging elements of modern online life without deeply exploring them. This is especially true regarding how he introduces artificial intelligence into the plot, an intriguing development that lacks the psychosexual kick it should have. The pluralized title for the film might give devotees of the original hope for a larger-scale escalation, and the movie ultimately delivers that, with a suitably wild final act. But before that, it’s more like a polished Hitchcock thriller than a wild-eyed, tech-addled De Palma-style shocker. Influencers’ heavy use of actual places might also be what keeps it from coming across like pure nightmare fuel. Our society may be overrun with content-churning influencers, digital deception, and exploitative travel, but the world itself is still here, for now.