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“This whole affair stinks like a bad made-for-TV,” states a cynical commentator during the chilling follow-up Influencers. In the moment, his tone is dismissive in a calculated way toward an interviewee with an bizarre tale he once said he trusted. But his assessment of what’s happening on screen isn't inaccurate. Superficially, two streaming movies about a young woman who worms her way into the lives of social media stars and then murders them seems like a modern-day version of a lurid yet network-approved Movie of the Week. The wild thing regarding Influencers is how much better it is compared to much of its competition, regardless of screen size. It is precisely the suspense film that should give its peers a serious bout of FOMO.

Revisiting the Original and Establishing the Scene

2022’s Influencer follows the enigmatic CW (Cassandra Naud) while she quietly chooses traveling alone influencer targets, lures them to their deaths, and conceals those deaths (for a time) by seizing control of their socials. The film leaves off (spoiler ahead) with CW marooned on an uninhabited island near the coast of Thailand, following her most recent mark, Madison (Emily Tennant), reverses their roles on her.

This provides 2025's Influencers some early ambiguity, when returning filmmaker Kurtis David Harder resumes with CW happily living 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 attention and anger.

CW comments to her partner that someone should try stranding a device-obsessed influencer in a place without any devices and see whether they can make it. Are we witnessing an origin-story prequel? Was CW radicalized by seeing the special treatment afforded a single clout-chaser?

Shifting Perspectives and International Chases

The story’s perspective changes multiple times, eventually clarifying those introductory moments' chronological position. The story revisits Madison, now cleared of committing CW’s crimes, yet still encounters suspicion regarding her recounting of the events, which includes the murder of Madison’s boyfriend. The film also follows Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), based in Bali and trying to boost his profile as part of a right-wing-influencer duo with Ariana (Veronica Long), though his preferred medium involves masculine-focused livestreams, rather than the curated images that normally capture CW's interest.

Naud remains terrifically magnetic in her role, a role that appears particularly tailor-made to her strengths. (She also designed CW's eye-catching outfits.) While the follow-up'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, social media surveillance, and a seemingly limitless travel fund to pursue or evade one another. Of course, perhaps the vast resources isn’t necessary. Online personalities possess a knack for gaining access to posh places at little cost, a skill which CW mirrors with her more overt scamming.

Ingenious Filmmaking and Cinematic Travelogue

The creative team for Influencers appear equally resourceful in locating stunning locations to visit, though they were presumably more legitimate about it. The vast majority of the movie appears to be filmed in real places, giving it an authentic gravity that lingers even as numerous sequences consist of a handful of actors of characters looking at digital devices.

It follows the same logic which allowed the Bond franchise look so consistently opulent for decades: Indeed, explosive action and visual effects can show off a big budget, but simply offering a kind of visual tour for the audience also feels deeply filmic. It’s also especially fitting for a story so rooted in the coexisting superficial glamour and desperate hustle involved in producing jealousy-worthy online content.

All of the characters visiting Bali, similar to those who were in Thailand in the first film, seem to have access to impossibly chic modern bungalows; films exist about lifeguards that don’t show off this much overhead swimming-pool footage. The characters must believably inhabit these lush, remote places to highlight the uncomfortable paradox of how often everyone — even the woman exacting revenge on the influencers’ self-centered phoniness — nevertheless spends plenty of time under the light of their screens.

Balanced Depictions and Digital-Age Suspense

Simultaneously, the director has not crafted a screed targeting the emptiness of online fame. While it can be gratifying to see CW exploit different internet celebrities, and a sense reminiscent of Hitchcock of alignment allows us to wish she doesn’t get caught, Harder is relatively understanding of the major influencer characters. In the first movie, he keyed into the loneliness Madison felt while on ostensibly dream getaways. In this film, Harder seems to trust that just observing Jacob in action will reveal that he is selling snake-oil masculinity to other gullible men; he avoids turning into a caricature the character further. He even grants Jacob a measure of dignity by showing his true devotion to his partner; he’s a hypocrite, but Ariana is a collaborator in his hypocrisy, not someone exploited by it.

The flip side of this balanced approach means it may occasionally seem as if he is acknowledging elements of contemporary digital culture without deeply exploring them. This is especially true regarding how he brings AI into the plot, an intriguing development which misses the psychosexual kick it should have. The retitled sequel for the film might give devotees of the original expectations of a larger-scale escalation, and the film does eventually provide exactly that, with a suitably chaotic climax. However, initially, it resembles more a polished Hitchcock thriller than an wild-eyed, tech-addled Brian De Palma thriller. Influencers’ extensive use of real-world locations might also be what prevents it from seeming like utter horror. The world may be overrun with content-churning influencers, digital deception, and self-serving tourism, but the world itself remains present, at least for now.