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“This whole affair smells of a bad made-for-TV,” remarks an opportunistic commentator during the chilling follow-up Influencers. In the moment, he’s being dismissive in a calculated way of a guest with an outlandish story he previously claimed he believed. Yet his assessment of what’s happening in the movie isn’t wrong. Superficially, a pair of streaming movies chronicling a young woman who insinuates herself into the lives of social media stars before killing them feels like the 21st-century equivalent of a lurid but cable-ready Movie of the Week. The wild thing regarding Influencers is how much better it proves to be compared to much of the competition, regardless of screen size. It’s the kind of suspense film that should give other movies a serious bout of FOMO.

Recapping the First Film and Establishing the Scene

The 2022 film Influencer follows the enigmatic CW (Cassandra Naud) while she methodically selects solo-traveling social media targets, entices them to their deaths, and conceals those murders (at least temporarily) by seizing control of their online accounts. The film leaves off (spoiler ahead) with CW stranded on an uninhabited island near the coast of Thailand, after her latest target, Madison (Emily Tennant), turns the tables against her.

This provides the 2025 Influencers a degree of ambiguity, when returning filmmaker the director picks up with CW happily living with her girlfriend Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. On a journey marking the couple’s one-year anniversary, British influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) catches CW's attention and ire.

CW comments to her partner that someone ought to attempt stranding a device-obsessed online personality somewhere with no technology to see whether they can survive. Is this a backstory prequel? Was CW radicalized by seeing the special treatment given to a single fame-seeker?

Evolving Viewpoints and International Chases

The narrative viewpoint shifts several more times, ultimately revealing those early scenes’ place in the timeline. The story revisits Madison, now exonerated for carrying out CW’s crimes, yet still encounters doubt over her recounting of what happened, which includes the murder of Madison’s boyfriend. We also follow Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), based in Bali attempting to boost his profile as part 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 attract CW's interest.

The actor continues to be immensely captivating in the part, a role that appears especially tailor-made for her talents. (She even created CW's striking outfits.) While the follow-up's screentime balance tips heavily toward CW — the first film felt more equally divided between her and Madison — it still works as a story of dueling investigators, as Madison and CW employ fake accounts, Insta-stalking, and an apparently unlimited travel budget to chase and/or escape one another. Of course, maybe the vast resources isn’t necessary. Influencers have a talent for getting to explore luxurious locales at little cost, a skill that CW echoes through her more blatant scamming.

Ingenious Filmmaking and Cinematic Travelogue

The creative team for Influencers appear equally resourceful in locating stunning locations to film, although they were likely less nefarious about it. The vast majority of the film seems 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 computer or phone screens.

It follows the same logic which allowed the Bond franchise look so persistently lavish over the years: Indeed, big action and visual effects can display large spending, however just providing a kind of visual tour to viewers also feels deeply filmic. This is particularly appropriate for a narrative so dependent on the coexisting superficial glamour and try-hard grind of creating jealousy-worthy online content.

All of the characters visiting Bali, similar to those who were in Thailand in the original, seem to have access to unbelievably stylish modern bungalows; there are movies concerning beach rescuers that don’t show off this much aerial pool video. The characters have to convincingly occupy these luxurious, far-flung locations to highlight the uneasy irony 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.

Nuanced Portrayals and Tech-Savvy Tension

Simultaneously, the director has not crafted a rant targeting the vacuousness of online fame. While it can be gratifying to see CW manipulate different internet celebrities, and a sense reminiscent of Hitchcock of identification allows us to wish she doesn’t get caught, the filmmaker is somewhat understanding of the major influencer characters. In the first movie, he keyed into the isolation Madison experienced during supposedly envy-worthy vacations. In this film, the director appears confident that just observing Jacob in action will make it clear that he is selling snake-oil masculinity to other doofuses; he resists turning into a caricature the character further. He even grants Jacob a degree of respect through depicting his genuine loyalty to his girlfriend; he is two-faced, yet Ariana is a collaborator in his double standards, not a victim of it.

The flip side of this balanced approach is that it may occasionally seem as if he is acknowledging bits of contemporary digital culture without deeply exploring them. This is particularly evident regarding how he brings AI into the plot, an intriguing development that lacks the psychosexual kick it deserves. The retitled sequel for the film could offer fans of the first movie expectations of an Aliens-style ante-upping, and the movie does eventually provide exactly that, with a suitably wild final act. But before that, it’s more like a polished Alfred Hitchcock movie than an frenzied, tech-addled De Palma-style shocker. Influencers’ heavy use of actual places might also be what prevents it from seeming like pure nightmare fuel. Our society might be saturated with always-online creators, digital deception, and exploitative travel, but the world itself remains present, for now.