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“Everything about this smells of a bad TV movie,” remarks an opportunistic podcaster midway through the chilling follow-up Influencers. In the moment, he’s being dismissive in a calculated way toward an interviewee whose bizarre tale he previously claimed he believed. Yet his assessment of the events in the movie isn’t wrong. On its face, two streaming movies chronicling a woman who insinuates herself into the worlds of social media stars before killing them feels like the 21st-century equivalent of a lurid but cable-ready Movie of the Week. The surprising aspect regarding Influencers is just how superior it proves to be than plenty of its competition, irrespective of screen size. It is precisely the suspense film that should give other movies a bad case of FOMO.

Revisiting the First Film and Setting the Stage

2022’s Influencer follows the enigmatic CW (Cassandra Naud) while she quietly chooses solo-traveling social media targets, entices them to their doom, and covers up those deaths (at least temporarily) by seizing control of their online accounts. The movie leaves off (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 a degree of mystery, as returning writer-director Kurtis David Harder resumes with the character CW happily living alongside her partner Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. During a trip to celebrate the couple’s one-year anniversary, UK-based influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) draws CW’s eye and ire.

CW remarks to her partner that a person should try stranding a device-obsessed online personality somewhere with no technology to see whether they can make it. Are we witnessing a backstory prequel? Was CW radicalized after witnessing the preferential treatment given to one fame-seeker?

Shifting Perspectives and Global Pursuits

The story’s perspective shifts several more times, eventually clarifying those early scenes’ place in the timeline. Harder catches up with Madison, who has been exonerated for carrying out CW’s crimes, yet still encounters doubt regarding her recounting of what happened, including the murder of her boyfriend. We also follow Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), living in Bali and trying to juice his career as part of a conservative-influencer power couple alongside Ariana (Veronica Long), though his preferred medium involves masculine-focused livestreams, rather than the Instagram photos that typically capture CW’s attention.

Naud remains terrifically magnetic in the part, which seems particularly custom-fit for her talents. (She also designed CW's striking wardrobe.) While the follow-up's focus tips heavily toward CW — the original felt more equally divided between her and Madison — it still functions as a tale of dueling amateur detectives, as Madison and CW both use fabricated profiles, Insta-stalking, and a seemingly unlimited travel budget to chase or evade one another. Of course, maybe the unlimited budget isn’t necessary. Influencers have a knack for getting to explore posh places without paying much, a skill which CW mirrors through her more blatant scamming.

Ingenious Filmmaking and Cinematic Travelogue

The filmmakers behind Influencers seem similarly resourceful in locating beautiful places to film, although they were likely less nefarious about it. The vast majority of the film seems to be shot on location, providing it a real-world weight that lingers even when 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 appear so persistently lavish for decades: Indeed, big action and visual effects can display a big budget, but simply offering a kind of visual tour to viewers also feels deeply filmic. This is especially fitting for a narrative so rooted in the coexisting surface-level allure and try-hard grind involved in producing jealousy-worthy digital content.

All of the characters visiting Bali, like those staying in Thailand in the first film, seem to have access to impossibly chic contemporary villas; films exist concerning beach rescuers which don't feature as much aerial pool video. These individuals must believably inhabit these luxurious, remote places to highlight the uneasy irony of how often everyone — even the woman exacting revenge on the influencers’ self-centered phoniness — nevertheless devotes much time in the glow of their screens.

Balanced Depictions and Digital-Age Suspense

At the same time, Harder hasn’t authored a screed targeting the emptiness of the influencer industry. While it is satisfying to see CW manipulate different internet celebrities, and a Hitchcockian sense of identification allows us to hope she doesn’t get caught, Harder is somewhat understanding of the major influencer characters. In the first movie, he tapped into the isolation Madison experienced during ostensibly envy-worthy vacations. Here, the director appears confident that merely watching Jacob in action will reveal that he is selling snake-oil masculinity to other gullible men; he avoids turning into a caricature the character. He even gives Jacob a degree of respect by showing his genuine loyalty to his partner; he’s a hypocrite, yet Ariana is a partner in his hypocrisy, not someone exploited by it.

The other side of this balanced approach means it may occasionally seem that he’s nodding at elements of contemporary digital culture without deeply exploring them further. This is especially true regarding how he introduces artificial intelligence into the story, a fascinating turn which misses the psychological edge it deserves. The pluralized title of Influencers could offer fans of the first movie expectations of a larger-scale escalation, and the movie ultimately delivers exactly that, with an appropriately wild final act. But before that, it’s more like a sleek Hitchcock thriller than a wild-eyed, technology-obsessed De Palma-style shocker. Influencers’ heavy use of real-world locations might also be what prevents it from seeming like utter horror. Our society may be overrun with always-online creators, digital deception, and exploitative travel, but the world itself is still here, at least for now.