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“The entire situation stinks like a cheap TV movie,” states an opportunistic podcaster during the chilling follow-up Influencers. At that point, he’s being dismissive in a calculated way of a guest with an bizarre tale he previously claimed he believed. Yet his assessment of the events on screen isn't inaccurate. On its face, two streaming movies about a woman who worms her way into the lives of social media stars before killing them feels like a modern-day version of a tawdry yet cable-ready Movie of the Week. The surprising aspect about Influencers is just how superior it is compared to much of its competition, regardless of where you watch it. It’s the kind of suspense film capable of giving its peers a bad case of FOMO.

Revisiting the Original and Establishing the Scene

The 2022 film Influencer tracks the enigmatic CW (Cassandra Naud) while she methodically selects traveling alone social media targets, entices them to their deaths, and conceals those deaths (for a time) by seizing control of their online accounts. The movie concludes (spoiler ahead) with CW marooned on an uninhabited island off the coast of Thailand, following her most recent mark, Madison (Emily Tennant), turns the tables on her.

This provides 2025's Influencers some early mystery, when returning writer-director the director picks up with CW contentedly residing alongside her partner Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. On a journey to celebrate the couple’s one-year anniversary, British influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) draws CW’s eye and ire.

CW comments to Diane that someone ought to attempt stranding a device-obsessed influencer somewhere without any devices to see if they can make it. Is this a backstory prequel? Was CW radicalized after witnessing the preferential treatment afforded a single clout-chaser?

Shifting Perspectives and Global Pursuits

The story’s perspective shifts several more times, ultimately revealing those early scenes’ chronological position. Harder catches up with Madison, now cleared of carrying out CW's offenses, but still faces suspicion over her recounting of what happened, which includes the murder of Madison’s boyfriend. We also follow Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), living in Bali and trying to juice his career as half of a right-wing-influencer power couple with Ariana (Veronica Long), although his preferred medium is bro-heavy streams, as opposed to the curated images that normally capture CW’s attention.

Naud remains immensely captivating in the part, a role that appears particularly custom-fit for her talents. (She even created CW's eye-catching wardrobe.) While the sequel’s screentime balance leans heavily into CW — the first film seemed more balanced between her and Madison — it still functions as a tale of dueling amateur detectives, with both women employ fabricated profiles, Insta-stalking, and an apparently unlimited travel budget to chase or evade each other. Of course, perhaps the vast resources aren't needed. Influencers have a knack for getting to explore posh places at little cost, a skill which CW mirrors with her more overt scamming.

Ingenious Filmmaking and Cinematic Travelogue

The filmmakers behind Influencers seem similarly ingenious in locating beautiful places to visit, although they were presumably more legitimate in their methods. The vast majority of the film seems to be shot on location, giving it a real-world weight that lingers even when numerous sequences involve a handful of actors of characters looking at digital devices.

It follows the same logic which allowed the James Bond movies appear so consistently opulent over the years: Indeed, explosive action and special effects can show off large spending, but just providing a travelogue of sorts to viewers also feels deeply filmic. This is particularly appropriate for a narrative so dependent on the coexisting surface-level allure and desperate hustle involved in producing jealousy-worthy digital content.

Every character in Bali, similar to those staying in Thailand in the first film, seem to have entry to unbelievably stylish contemporary villas; films exist about lifeguards that don’t show off as much aerial pool footage. The characters have to convincingly inhabit these lush, remote places to emphasize the uneasy irony of how frequently everyone — including the woman wreaking vengeance on the influencers’ self-centered phoniness — nevertheless devotes much time in the glow of their devices.

Nuanced Portrayals and Tech-Savvy Tension

Simultaneously, the director has not crafted a screed against the emptiness of the influencer industry. Though it can be satisfying to watch CW exploit various online personalities, and a sense reminiscent of Hitchcock of identification lets us to wish she evades capture, Harder is somewhat sympathetic to the major influencer characters. In the first movie, he keyed into the isolation Madison felt during supposedly dream getaways. Here, 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. He even gives Jacob a measure of dignity through depicting his true devotion to his partner; he is two-faced, yet Ariana is a partner in his hypocrisy, not someone exploited by it.

The flip side of this balanced approach means it may occasionally seem as if he’s nodding at bits of modern online life without investigating them further. This is especially true regarding how he brings AI into the story, a fascinating turn which misses the psychosexual kick it deserves. The pluralized title for the film could offer devotees of the original expectations of a larger-scale escalation, and the film does eventually provide exactly that, with an appropriately wild final act. However, initially, it’s more like a sleek Hitchcock thriller than a frenzied, technology-obsessed 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 may be overrun with always-online creators, online fraud, and exploitative travel, but reality itself is still here, for now.