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“The entire situation stinks of a cheap made-for-TV,” remarks a cynical podcaster midway through the chilling follow-up Influencers. In the moment, his tone is dismissive in a calculated way of a guest with an bizarre tale he previously said he trusted. But his assessment of what’s happening on screen isn't inaccurate. Superficially, a pair of streaming movies chronicling a young woman who insinuates herself into the worlds of social media stars and then murders them seems like a modern-day version of a tawdry but network-approved weekly TV movie. The surprising aspect about Influencers remains just how superior it is compared to much of the competition, regardless of screen size. It is precisely the thriller capable of giving its peers a bad case of FOMO.

Revisiting the Original and Establishing the Scene

The 2022 film Influencer tracks the mysterious CW (Cassandra Naud) as she quietly chooses solo-traveling influencer targets, entices them to their doom, and conceals those deaths (for a time) by taking control of their socials. The film concludes (spoiler ahead) with CW marooned on a deserted island near the coast of Thailand, following her most recent mark, Madison (Emily Tennant), reverses their roles against her.

This provides the 2025 Influencers some early ambiguity, when returning writer-director Kurtis David Harder resumes with the character CW contentedly residing with her girlfriend Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. On a journey marking the couple’s one-year anniversary, UK-based influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) catches CW's attention and ire.

CW remarks to her partner that a person ought to attempt stranding a device-obsessed online personality somewhere 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 Global Pursuits

The narrative viewpoint changes multiple times, ultimately revealing those introductory moments' place in the timeline. Harder catches up with Madison, who has been cleared of carrying out CW's offenses, yet still encounters doubt over her version of what happened, including the murder of her boyfriend. The film also follows Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), living in Bali and trying to boost his profile as half of a right-wing-influencer power couple with Ariana (Veronica Long), although his preferred medium involves masculine-focused livestreams, rather than the Instagram photos that typically capture CW's interest.

The actor continues to be terrifically magnetic in the part, a role that appears especially tailor-made to her strengths. (She even created CW's striking outfits.) Although the sequel’s screentime balance tips heavily toward CW — the first film seemed more balanced between the two women — it still works as a story of rival investigators, as Madison and CW both use fake accounts, Insta-stalking, and an apparently limitless travel fund to pursue and/or escape each other. Of course, maybe the unlimited budget aren't needed. Influencers have a talent for getting to explore posh places at little cost, a skill which CW mirrors with her more overt scamming.

Resourceful Production and Visual Wanderlust

The filmmakers behind Influencers seem similarly resourceful about finding beautiful places to visit, though they were presumably more legitimate in their methods. Most of the film appears to be filmed in real places, providing it a real-world weight that lingers even when many scenes consist of a handful of actors of people staring at computer or phone screens.

It follows the same logic which allowed the Bond franchise look so persistently lavish over the years: Indeed, explosive action and visual effects can display a big budget, but simply offering a kind of visual tour for the audience also feels deeply filmic. This is particularly appropriate for a narrative so dependent on the simultaneous superficial glamour and desperate hustle involved in producing envy-inducing online content.

All of the characters in Bali, similar to those staying in Thailand in the first film, appear to enjoy entry to unbelievably stylish contemporary villas; films exist concerning beach rescuers that don’t show off this much overhead swimming-pool video. These individuals must believably occupy these lush, remote places to highlight the uneasy irony of how frequently everyone — including the woman exacting revenge upon the online stars' narcissistic falseness — nonetheless devotes much time in the glow of their screens.

Balanced Depictions and Digital-Age Suspense

At the same time, the director has not crafted a rant targeting the emptiness of the influencer industry. Though it is satisfying to see CW exploit different internet celebrities, and a sense reminiscent of Hitchcock of alignment allows us to wish she doesn’t get caught, the filmmaker is relatively sympathetic to the major influencer characters. Previously, he keyed into the isolation Madison experienced while on supposedly envy-worthy vacations. Here, the director appears confident that just observing Jacob in action will reveal that he’s peddling snake-oil masculinity to other gullible men; he resists caricaturing the character further. He even grants Jacob a degree of respect through depicting his true devotion to his partner; he is two-faced, yet Ariana is a partner in his hypocrisy, not someone exploited of it.

The other side of this balanced approach is that it can sometimes appear that he’s nodding at bits of modern online life without deeply exploring them. This is particularly evident of the way he introduces artificial intelligence into the plot, a fascinating turn that lacks the psychological edge it deserves. The pluralized title for the film could offer fans of the first movie expectations of a larger-scale escalation, and the film ultimately delivers exactly that, with an appropriately wild final act. However, initially, it’s more like a polished Alfred Hitchcock movie than an frenzied, technology-obsessed De Palma-style shocker. Influencers’ extensive use of actual places may also be what keeps it from coming across like pure nightmare fuel. Our society might be saturated with always-online creators, online fraud, and exploitative travel, but the world itself is still here, for now.