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“The entire situation smells of a bad made-for-TV,” states an opportunistic commentator during the chilling follow-up Influencers. At that point, he’s being dismissive in a calculated way toward an interviewee whose bizarre tale he once said he trusted. But his assessment of what’s happening in the movie isn’t wrong. On its face, two streaming movies chronicling a woman who worms her way into the worlds of social media stars and then murders them seems like a modern-day version of a lurid but cable-ready weekly TV movie. The wild thing regarding Influencers remains how much better it is than plenty of the competition, regardless of screen size. It’s the kind of thriller capable of giving its peers a bad case of FOMO.

Revisiting the Original and Establishing the Scene

2022’s Influencer follows the enigmatic CW (Cassandra Naud) as she methodically selects traveling alone influencer targets, entices them to their doom, and covers up those deaths (at least temporarily) by seizing control of their online accounts. The film concludes (spoiler ahead) with CW stranded on an uninhabited island near the coast of Thailand, following her latest target, Madison (Emily Tennant), turns the tables against her.

This provides the 2025 Influencers a degree of mystery, as returning writer-director Kurtis David Harder resumes with the character CW happily living with her girlfriend Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. During a trip to celebrate the couple’s one-year anniversary, British influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) catches CW's attention and anger.

CW remarks to Diane that a person ought to attempt leaving a device-obsessed online personality somewhere with no technology and see if they can survive. Are we witnessing an origin-story prequel? Did CW become extremist by seeing the special treatment afforded a single fame-seeker?

Evolving Viewpoints and International Chases

The narrative viewpoint changes multiple times, ultimately revealing those introductory moments' place in the timeline. Harder catches up with Madison, who has been exonerated for carrying out CW’s crimes, but still faces suspicion regarding her recounting of what happened, including the murder of her boyfriend. We also follow Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), living in Bali attempting to boost his profile as half of a conservative-influencer duo with Ariana (Veronica Long), though his preferred medium is bro-heavy streams, rather than the Instagram photos that normally capture CW's interest.

Naud remains terrifically magnetic in her role, a role that appears particularly tailor-made for her talents. (She even created CW's striking outfits.) While the sequel’s screentime balance leans heavily into CW — the first film seemed more balanced between the two women — it still works as a tale of dueling investigators, with both women employ fake accounts, social media surveillance, and a seemingly unlimited travel budget to chase and/or escape one another. Of course, perhaps the unlimited budget aren't needed. Influencers have a talent for gaining access to posh places without paying much, a skill which CW mirrors with her more overt scheming.

Resourceful Production and Cinematic Travelogue

The filmmakers behind Influencers seem similarly resourceful in locating beautiful places to visit, though they were presumably less nefarious in their methods. The vast majority of the film appears to be shot on location, giving it an authentic gravity that lingers even when many scenes consist of a handful of actors of characters looking at computer or phone screens.

It follows the same logic that made the James Bond movies appear so consistently opulent for decades: Indeed, big action and visual effects can show off large spending, however just providing a kind of visual tour to viewers also seems inherently cinematic. It’s also especially fitting for a story so rooted in the simultaneous surface-level allure and try-hard grind of creating envy-inducing digital content.

All of the characters visiting Bali, similar to those who were in Thailand in the first film, appear to enjoy entry to unbelievably stylish modern bungalows; there are movies concerning beach rescuers that don’t show off as much overhead swimming-pool video. These individuals have to convincingly occupy these luxurious, remote places to emphasize the uncomfortable paradox of how frequently everyone — even the woman exacting revenge on the influencers’ narcissistic falseness — nonetheless spends plenty of time in the glow of their devices.

Balanced Depictions and Tech-Savvy Tension

At the same time, the director has not crafted a rant against the emptiness of the influencer industry. Though it can be satisfying to see CW manipulate various online personalities, and a sense reminiscent of Hitchcock of identification allows us to wish she evades capture, Harder is relatively sympathetic to the major influencer characters. In the first movie, he keyed into the loneliness Madison experienced during supposedly dream getaways. Here, the director appears confident that merely watching Jacob at work will reveal that he’s peddling snake-oil masculinity to other gullible men; he avoids caricaturing the character further. He even grants Jacob a measure of dignity by showing his true devotion to his girlfriend; he is two-faced, yet Ariana is a partner in his hypocrisy, not someone exploited of it.

The other side of Harder’s even-keeled presentation is that it may occasionally seem that he is acknowledging bits of contemporary digital culture without deeply exploring them further. This is especially true regarding how he introduces artificial intelligence into the plot, a fascinating turn that lacks the psychological edge it should have. The retitled sequel of Influencers could offer fans of the first movie expectations of a larger-scale ante-upping, and the movie ultimately delivers exactly that, with an appropriately chaotic climax. However, initially, it’s more like a polished Hitchcock thriller than a wild-eyed, technology-obsessed De Palma-style shocker. Influencers’ heavy use of actual places may also be what keeps it from seeming like utter horror. Our society might be saturated with content-churning influencers, online fraud, and exploitative travel, but the world itself is still here, at least for now.