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“This whole affair reeks like a cheap TV movie,” remarks an opportunistic commentator midway through the chilling follow-up Influencers. In the moment, he’s being dismissive in a calculated way toward an interviewee whose bizarre tale he once said he trusted. But his description of the events in the movie isn’t wrong. On its face, a pair of films on demand chronicling a young woman who insinuates herself into the worlds of online influencers and then murders them seems like a modern-day version of a tawdry yet cable-ready Movie of the Week. The wild thing regarding Influencers remains 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 other movies a bad case of FOMO.

Recapping the First Film and Establishing the Scene

2022’s Influencer tracks the mysterious CW (Cassandra Naud) as she quietly chooses solo-traveling influencer targets, entices them to their doom, and conceals those murders (at least temporarily) by taking control of their socials. The movie leaves off (spoiler ahead) with CW stranded on an uninhabited island near the coast of Thailand, following her latest target, Madison (Emily Tennant), reverses their roles against her.

This lends 2025's Influencers a degree of ambiguity, when returning writer-director the director picks up with the character CW contentedly residing alongside her partner Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. During a trip to celebrate their first anniversary, UK-based influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) draws CW’s eye and ire.

CW comments to her partner that someone ought to attempt leaving a device-obsessed influencer somewhere without any devices to see whether they can survive. Is this an origin-story prequel? Was CW radicalized by seeing the special treatment given to one fame-seeker?

Shifting Perspectives and Global Pursuits

The narrative viewpoint changes multiple times, eventually clarifying those early scenes’ place in the timeline. The story revisits Madison, who has been exonerated for carrying out CW's offenses, but still faces suspicion over her version of what happened, including the murder of her boyfriend. We also follow Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), based in Bali and trying to juice his career as part of a right-wing-influencer power couple alongside Ariana (Veronica Long), although his chosen platform involves masculine-focused livestreams, rather than the Instagram photos that normally capture CW’s attention.

Naud remains immensely captivating in her role, which seems especially tailor-made for her talents. (She even created CW's striking outfits.) While the follow-up's focus leans heavily into CW — the original felt more equally divided between her and Madison — it still functions as a tale of dueling amateur detectives, with both women employ fake accounts, Insta-stalking, and an apparently limitless travel fund to chase and/or escape each other. Of course, perhaps the unlimited budget aren't needed. Influencers have a knack for getting to explore luxurious locales at little cost, a skill that CW echoes with her more overt scheming.

Resourceful Production and Cinematic Travelogue

The filmmakers behind Influencers seem similarly resourceful about finding stunning locations to film, though they were likely more legitimate in their methods. The vast majority of the movie seems to be filmed in real places, providing it a real-world weight that lingers even when many scenes involve a handful of actors of characters looking at computer or phone screens.

It follows the same logic which allowed the James Bond movies appear so persistently lavish over the years: Yes, explosive action and special effects can show off a big budget, but just providing a kind of visual tour to viewers also seems inherently cinematic. It’s also especially fitting for a narrative so dependent on the coexisting superficial glamour and try-hard grind of creating jealousy-worthy digital content.

Every character visiting Bali, similar to those who were in Thailand in the first film, seem to have entry to unbelievably stylish contemporary villas; there are movies concerning beach rescuers that don’t show off as much aerial pool footage. The characters have to convincingly occupy these lush, far-flung locations to highlight the uneasy irony of how frequently each person — even the woman wreaking vengeance on the influencers’ narcissistic falseness — nonetheless spends plenty of time under the light of their screens.

Nuanced Portrayals and Digital-Age Suspense

At the same time, the director has not crafted a rant against the emptiness of the influencer industry. While it is satisfying to watch CW manipulate various online personalities, and a Hitchcockian sense of identification lets us to wish she doesn’t get caught, the filmmaker is somewhat understanding of the key influencer figures. In the first movie, he tapped into the isolation Madison experienced during ostensibly dream getaways. In this film, the director appears confident that merely watching Jacob at work will reveal that he is selling snake-oil masculinity to other doofuses; he resists caricaturing the character further. He even grants Jacob a degree of respect by showing his true devotion to his partner; he’s a hypocrite, but Ariana is a partner in his hypocrisy, not a victim of it.

The other side of this balanced approach means it can sometimes appear that he’s nodding at bits of modern online life without investigating them. This is particularly evident of the way he introduces artificial intelligence into the story, an intriguing development that lacks the psychological edge it should have. The retitled sequel of Influencers could offer devotees of the original hope for a larger-scale escalation, and the movie ultimately delivers exactly that, with a suitably chaotic climax. But before that, it resembles more a sleek Hitchcock thriller than an frenzied, tech-addled Brian De Palma thriller. Influencers’ heavy use of real-world locations may also be what keeps it from seeming like pure nightmare fuel. The world may be overrun with always-online creators, online fraud, and self-serving tourism, but reality itself is still here, at least for now.