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“This whole affair reeks of a bad made-for-TV,” remarks a cynical podcaster midway through the chilling follow-up Influencers. At that point, he’s being dismissive in a calculated way toward an interviewee with an outlandish story he once said he trusted. Yet his description of what’s happening on screen isn’t wrong. On its face, a pair of streaming movies chronicling a young woman who insinuates herself into the worlds of social media stars before killing them feels like a modern-day version of a lurid yet network-approved Movie of the Week. The surprising aspect about Influencers is how much better it proves to be than plenty of its competition, regardless of screen size. It’s the kind of thriller that should give other movies a bad case of FOMO.

Revisiting the First Film and Establishing the Scene

2022’s Influencer tracks the mysterious CW (Cassandra Naud) as she quietly chooses solo-traveling social media targets, entices them to their deaths, and conceals those deaths (at least temporarily) by seizing control of their socials. The film leaves off (spoiler ahead) with CW stranded on an uninhabited island off the coast of Thailand, after her most recent mark, Madison (Emily Tennant), turns the tables against her.

This provides the 2025 Influencers some early mystery, when returning writer-director Kurtis David Harder resumes with the character CW happily living alongside her partner Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. On a journey to celebrate their first anniversary, British influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) draws CW's attention and ire.

CW remarks to Diane that someone should try stranding a phone-addicted online personality in a place with no technology and see whether they can make it. Is this an origin-story prequel? Did CW become extremist by seeing the preferential treatment afforded one clout-chaser?

Shifting Perspectives and International Chases

The narrative viewpoint shifts several more times, ultimately revealing those early scenes’ chronological position. Harder catches up with Madison, now exonerated for committing CW’s crimes, but still faces suspicion over her version of the events, including the murder of Madison’s boyfriend. The film also follows Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), living in Bali attempting to juice his career as part of a conservative-influencer power couple with Ariana (Veronica Long), though his preferred medium involves masculine-focused livestreams, rather than the curated images that typically capture CW’s attention.

The actor continues to be immensely captivating in the part, a role that appears especially tailor-made to her strengths. (She even created CW's striking wardrobe.) While the sequel’s focus tips heavily toward CW — the first film seemed more balanced between her and Madison — it still works as a story of rival investigators, as Madison and CW both use fake accounts, Insta-stalking, and an apparently unlimited travel budget to pursue or evade one another. Then again, maybe the unlimited budget isn’t necessary. Influencers have a knack for getting to explore luxurious locales at little cost, an ability that CW echoes through her more blatant scamming.

Ingenious Filmmaking and Cinematic Travelogue

The creative team for Influencers appear equally resourceful about finding stunning locations to film, though they were presumably less nefarious about it. Most of the movie appears to be filmed in real places, providing it a real-world weight that remains even as numerous sequences involve a handful of actors of people staring at computer or phone screens.

It’s the same principle which allowed the James Bond movies look so persistently lavish over the years: Yes, explosive action and special effects can display large spending, but simply offering a kind of visual tour to viewers also feels inherently cinematic. This is particularly appropriate for a narrative so dependent on the simultaneous surface-level allure and try-hard grind involved in producing jealousy-worthy online content.

All of the characters visiting Bali, like those who were in Thailand in the original, appear to enjoy entry to impossibly chic contemporary villas; films exist about lifeguards that don’t show off this much aerial pool video. The characters have to convincingly occupy these lush, far-flung locations to highlight the uneasy irony of how often each person — even the woman exacting revenge upon the online stars' self-centered phoniness — nonetheless devotes much time under the light of their devices.

Balanced Depictions and Digital-Age Suspense

Simultaneously, the director has not crafted a screed against the vacuousness of online fame. While it is gratifying to see CW manipulate different internet celebrities, and a Hitchcockian sense of identification allows us to hope she evades capture, the filmmaker is somewhat understanding of the major influencer characters. In the first movie, he tapped into the isolation Madison felt during ostensibly dream getaways. 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 avoids turning into a caricature the character. He even gives 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 of it.

The other side of this balanced approach means it can sometimes appear as if he’s nodding at bits of modern online life without deeply exploring them further. This is particularly evident regarding how he introduces artificial intelligence into the plot, a fascinating turn which misses the psychosexual kick it deserves. The pluralized title for the film might give devotees of the original hope for an Aliens-style escalation, and the movie does eventually provide that, with a suitably wild final act. However, initially, it’s more like a sleek Hitchcock thriller than a frenzied, tech-addled De Palma-style shocker. Influencers’ heavy use of actual places might also be what prevents it from coming across like pure nightmare fuel. The world might be saturated with content-churning influencers, digital deception, and self-serving tourism, but the world itself remains present, at least for now.