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“Everything about this stinks like a cheap made-for-TV,” states a cynical commentator during the chilling follow-up Influencers. At that point, his tone is dismissive in a calculated way toward an interviewee whose bizarre tale he once claimed he believed. Yet his description of the events on screen isn't inaccurate. On its face, two streaming movies about a young woman who insinuates herself into the worlds of online influencers before killing them seems like the 21st-century equivalent of a lurid yet network-approved Movie of the Week. The surprising aspect regarding Influencers remains how much better it is than plenty of its competition, regardless of screen size. It is precisely the suspense film capable of giving other movies a serious bout of FOMO.

Revisiting the First Film and Setting the Stage

2022’s Influencer follows the mysterious CW (Cassandra Naud) while she methodically selects traveling alone social media targets, entices them to their deaths, and covers up those deaths (at least temporarily) by seizing control of their online accounts. The film concludes (spoiler ahead) with CW stranded on an uninhabited island near the coast of Thailand, after her latest target, Madison (Emily Tennant), reverses their roles on her.

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

CW comments to her partner that a person should try stranding a phone-addicted influencer somewhere without any devices and see whether they can make it. Are we witnessing a backstory prequel? Did CW become extremist by seeing the preferential treatment given to a single clout-chaser?

Shifting Perspectives and International Chases

The narrative viewpoint shifts several more times, eventually clarifying those early scenes’ place in the timeline. The story revisits Madison, who has been cleared of carrying out CW's offenses, yet still encounters doubt regarding her version of what happened, which includes the murder of her boyfriend. The film also follows Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), living in Bali attempting to boost his profile as part of a conservative-influencer power couple with Ariana (Veronica Long), though his chosen platform is bro-heavy streams, rather than the Instagram photos that normally attract CW's interest.

Naud remains terrifically magnetic in the part, a role that appears particularly custom-fit for her talents. (She even created CW's eye-catching outfits.) Although the follow-up's screentime balance leans heavily into CW — the first film seemed more balanced between her and Madison — it still works as a tale of dueling investigators, as Madison and CW both use fake accounts, Insta-stalking, and a seemingly unlimited travel budget to chase or evade 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.

Resourceful Production and Cinematic Travelogue

The creative team for Influencers appear equally ingenious about finding beautiful places to film, although they were presumably more legitimate about it. Most of the movie seems to be filmed in real places, providing it an authentic gravity that remains even as numerous sequences consist of a relatively small cast of characters staring at digital devices.

It’s the same principle that made the James Bond movies appear so consistently opulent for decades: Indeed, explosive action and special effects can show off large spending, however just providing a travelogue of sorts to viewers also seems inherently cinematic. It’s also particularly appropriate for a narrative so dependent on the simultaneous superficial glamour and desperate hustle of creating envy-inducing online content.

Every character in Bali, like those who were in Thailand in the first film, seem to have entry to unbelievably stylish contemporary villas; films exist concerning beach rescuers which don't feature this much overhead swimming-pool video. The characters have to convincingly occupy these lush, far-flung locations to highlight the uncomfortable paradox of how frequently everyone — even 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

At the same time, Harder hasn’t authored a rant against the vacuousness of the influencer industry. Though it is satisfying to see CW exploit various online personalities, and a sense reminiscent of Hitchcock of alignment allows us to hope she evades capture, the filmmaker is relatively sympathetic to the major influencer characters. Previously, he tapped into the loneliness Madison felt during supposedly envy-worthy vacations. Here, the director appears confident that merely watching Jacob at work will reveal that he’s peddling false masculinity to other doofuses; he avoids caricaturing the character further. He even gives Jacob a measure of dignity by showing his true devotion to his girlfriend; he is two-faced, yet Ariana is a partner in his hypocrisy, not someone exploited of it.

The other side of this balanced approach means it may occasionally seem as if he’s nodding at elements of contemporary digital culture without investigating them further. This is especially true of the way he introduces artificial intelligence into the story, an intriguing development which misses the psychological edge it should have. The retitled sequel of Influencers might give devotees of the original hope for an Aliens-style ante-upping, and the film does eventually provide exactly that, with a suitably chaotic climax. However, initially, it’s more like a sleek Hitchcock thriller than a frenzied, tech-addled Brian De Palma thriller. Influencers’ heavy use of real-world locations might 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, at least for now.