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“The entire situation stinks like a bad TV movie,” observes a cynical commentator during the chilling follow-up Influencers. At that point, he’s being dismissive in a calculated way of a guest with an outlandish story he once claimed he believed. Yet his description of what’s happening in the movie isn't inaccurate. Superficially, two streaming movies about a young woman who worms her way into the lives of social media stars before killing them feels like a modern-day version of a tawdry but cable-ready weekly TV movie. The wild thing about Influencers is how much better it is compared to much of the competition, irrespective of screen size. It’s the kind of suspense film that should give other movies a serious bout of FOMO.

Revisiting the Original and Setting the Stage

2022’s Influencer follows the mysterious CW (Cassandra Naud) as she methodically selects traveling alone influencer targets, entices them to their doom, and covers up those murders (at least temporarily) by seizing control of their socials. The film concludes (spoiler ahead) with CW stranded on an uninhabited island near the coast of Thailand, following her most recent mark, Madison (Emily Tennant), turns the tables against her.

This lends the 2025 Influencers a degree of ambiguity, when returning writer-director Kurtis David Harder picks up with the character CW contentedly residing alongside her partner Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. During a trip marking the couple’s one-year anniversary, UK-based influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) draws CW’s eye and ire.

CW comments to her partner that a person ought to attempt leaving a device-obsessed online personality in a place without any devices and see whether they can make it. Is this a backstory prequel? Did CW become extremist by seeing the special treatment afforded one clout-chaser?

Shifting Perspectives and International Chases

The narrative viewpoint shifts several more times, ultimately revealing those introductory moments' place in the timeline. The story revisits Madison, now exonerated for committing CW’s crimes, but still faces suspicion regarding her recounting of what happened, including the killing of her boyfriend. We also follow Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), based in Bali and trying to juice his career as part of a right-wing-influencer duo with Ariana (Veronica Long), although his preferred medium involves masculine-focused livestreams, rather than the curated images that typically capture CW's interest.

The actor continues to be immensely captivating in the part, which seems particularly tailor-made for her talents. (She even created CW's eye-catching outfits.) While the follow-up's screentime balance leans heavily into CW — the original felt more equally divided between her and Madison — it still works as a tale of dueling investigators, with both women both use fabricated profiles, social media surveillance, and an apparently limitless travel fund to chase and/or escape one another. Of course, perhaps the vast resources isn’t necessary. Online personalities possess a talent for getting to explore posh places at little cost, an ability which CW mirrors through her more blatant scheming.

Ingenious Filmmaking and Visual Wanderlust

The filmmakers behind Influencers appear equally ingenious in locating stunning locations to film, although they were presumably less nefarious about it. The vast majority of the movie appears to be shot on location, giving it an authentic gravity that remains even when many scenes consist of a relatively small cast of characters staring at computer or phone screens.

It’s the same principle that made the James Bond movies appear so consistently opulent for decades: Indeed, explosive action and special effects can display a big budget, however just providing a kind of visual tour for the audience also seems deeply filmic. It’s also particularly appropriate for a story so rooted in the coexisting superficial glamour and try-hard grind of creating jealousy-worthy digital content.

All of the characters in Bali, similar to those who were in Thailand in the original, seem to have entry to impossibly chic contemporary villas; films exist about lifeguards that don’t show off this much aerial pool footage. These individuals must believably inhabit these luxurious, far-flung locations to highlight the uncomfortable paradox of how often everyone — even the woman wreaking vengeance on the influencers’ self-centered phoniness — nevertheless spends plenty of time in the glow of their screens.

Nuanced Portrayals and Digital-Age Suspense

At the same time, Harder hasn’t authored a screed targeting the vacuousness of the influencer industry. While it can be gratifying to see CW exploit various online personalities, and a Hitchcockian sense of alignment lets us to wish she doesn’t get caught, the filmmaker is somewhat sympathetic to the key influencer figures. Previously, he keyed into the isolation Madison felt while on supposedly envy-worthy vacations. Here, Harder seems to trust that just observing Jacob at work will make it clear that he’s peddling false masculinity to other gullible men; he avoids turning into a caricature the character. He even grants Jacob a measure of dignity by showing his genuine loyalty to his girlfriend; he’s a hypocrite, yet Ariana is a collaborator in his double standards, not a victim by it.

The flip side of this balanced approach is that it may occasionally seem as if he’s nodding at bits of contemporary digital culture without investigating them. This is particularly evident regarding how he introduces artificial intelligence into the plot, a fascinating turn that lacks the psychosexual kick it deserves. The pluralized title of Influencers could offer fans of the first movie hope for a larger-scale escalation, and the film ultimately delivers exactly that, with a suitably chaotic climax. But before that, it resembles more a polished Hitchcock thriller than a frenzied, tech-addled De Palma-style shocker. Influencers’ extensive use of actual places may 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 reality itself remains present, for now.