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“This whole affair smells like a cheap made-for-TV,” states a cynical podcaster midway through the chilling follow-up Influencers. In the moment, he’s being manipulatively dismissive of a guest with an outlandish story he once said he trusted. Yet his assessment of the events on screen isn't inaccurate. Superficially, a pair of streaming movies chronicling a young woman who worms her way into the worlds of social media stars and then murders them seems like a modern-day version of a lurid but network-approved Movie of the Week. The surprising aspect about Influencers is just how superior it is compared to much of its competition, irrespective of where you watch it. It is precisely the thriller that should give other movies a bad case of FOMO.

Recapping the First Film and Establishing the Scene

The 2022 film Influencer tracks the enigmatic CW (Cassandra Naud) while she methodically selects traveling alone influencer targets, lures them to their deaths, and conceals those deaths (at least temporarily) by taking control of their socials. The movie concludes (spoiler ahead) with CW stranded on a deserted island near the coast of Thailand, after her most recent mark, Madison (Emily Tennant), reverses their roles on her.

This provides the 2025 Influencers a degree of mystery, as returning writer-director the director picks up with CW happily living with her girlfriend Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. During a trip marking the couple’s one-year anniversary, UK-based influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) catches CW's attention and ire.

CW remarks to Diane that a person ought to attempt stranding a phone-addicted influencer somewhere without any devices and see whether they can survive. Are we witnessing an origin-story prequel? Did CW become extremist by seeing the preferential treatment given to a single clout-chaser?

Evolving Viewpoints and International Chases

The narrative viewpoint changes multiple times, ultimately revealing those early scenes’ place in the timeline. The story revisits Madison, who has been exonerated for committing CW's offenses, but still faces suspicion over her recounting of what happened, which includes the killing of Madison’s boyfriend. The film also follows Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), living in Bali and trying to boost his profile as part of a right-wing-influencer power couple alongside Ariana (Veronica Long), although his preferred medium is bro-heavy streams, rather than the Instagram photos that normally capture CW’s attention.

The actor continues to be terrifically magnetic in the part, a role that appears especially tailor-made for her talents. (She even created CW's eye-catching outfits.) While the follow-up's focus tips heavily toward CW — the original felt more equally divided between the two women — it still functions as a story of rival investigators, as Madison and CW both use fake accounts, social media surveillance, and a seemingly limitless travel fund to chase and/or escape one another. Of course, perhaps the vast resources isn’t necessary. Influencers have a knack for getting to explore posh places at little cost, a skill which CW mirrors through her more blatant scheming.

Ingenious Filmmaking and Visual Wanderlust

The creative team for Influencers appear equally resourceful about finding beautiful places to film, although they were presumably more legitimate about it. The vast majority of the film seems to be shot on location, giving it an authentic gravity that lingers even when numerous sequences involve a handful of actors of characters staring at computer or phone screens.

It’s the same principle which allowed the Bond franchise appear so persistently lavish for decades: Yes, explosive action and visual effects can show off large spending, however simply offering a travelogue of sorts for the audience also feels inherently cinematic. It’s also particularly appropriate for a narrative so dependent on the simultaneous superficial glamour and desperate hustle involved in producing envy-inducing digital content.

All of the characters visiting Bali, like those staying in Thailand in the first film, appear to enjoy access to impossibly chic modern bungalows; films exist about lifeguards which don't feature as much aerial pool video. These individuals must believably inhabit these lush, remote places to emphasize the uncomfortable paradox of how often everyone — even the woman wreaking vengeance upon the online stars' self-centered phoniness — nonetheless spends plenty of time under the light of their devices.

Balanced Depictions and Digital-Age Suspense

At the same time, the director has not crafted a rant targeting the vacuousness of online fame. While it is satisfying to see CW manipulate various online personalities, and a sense reminiscent of Hitchcock of identification allows us to wish she evades capture, the filmmaker is somewhat understanding of the major influencer characters. Previously, he keyed into the isolation Madison felt during supposedly envy-worthy vacations. In this film, Harder seems to trust that just observing Jacob at work will reveal that he is selling false masculinity to other gullible men; he resists caricaturing the character further. He even grants Jacob a degree of respect by showing his genuine loyalty to his girlfriend; he’s a hypocrite, yet Ariana is a collaborator in his hypocrisy, not someone exploited by it.

The flip side of this balanced approach is that it may occasionally seem as if he’s nodding at bits of modern online life without investigating them further. This is especially true of the way he introduces artificial intelligence into the plot, an intriguing development which misses the psychological edge it deserves. The retitled sequel for the film could offer fans of the first movie expectations of a larger-scale ante-upping, and the film ultimately delivers that, with an appropriately wild final act. However, initially, it’s more like a polished Alfred Hitchcock movie than an frenzied, tech-addled De Palma-style shocker. Influencers’ extensive use of actual places may also be what prevents it from coming across like pure nightmare fuel. The world might be saturated with always-online creators, digital deception, and self-serving tourism, but the world itself is still here, for now.