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“This whole affair smells like a bad TV movie,” observes a cynical commentator midway through the chilling follow-up Influencers. In the moment, his tone is manipulatively dismissive of a guest with an outlandish story he once claimed he believed. But his description of what’s happening on screen isn’t wrong. Superficially, two films on demand about a woman who worms her way into the worlds of online influencers before killing them seems like the 21st-century equivalent of a lurid yet network-approved weekly TV movie. The wild thing regarding Influencers remains how much better it is than plenty of the competition, irrespective of screen size. It is precisely the suspense film capable of giving its peers a serious bout of FOMO.

Revisiting the Original and Establishing the Scene

The 2022 film Influencer tracks the mysterious CW (Cassandra Naud) while she methodically selects solo-traveling social media targets, lures them to their deaths, and conceals those murders (for a time) by seizing control of their socials. The movie leaves off (spoiler ahead) with CW stranded on an uninhabited island near the coast of Thailand, after her latest target, Madison (Emily Tennant), reverses their roles against her.

This provides the 2025 Influencers a degree of mystery, as returning writer-director Kurtis David Harder 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, UK-based influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) draws CW's attention and anger.

CW remarks to her partner that someone should try stranding a phone-addicted online personality somewhere without any devices and see whether they can make it. Is this a backstory prequel? Was CW radicalized after witnessing the preferential treatment afforded one fame-seeker?

Shifting Perspectives and International Chases

The story’s perspective changes multiple times, ultimately revealing those introductory moments' chronological position. The story revisits Madison, now exonerated for carrying out CW’s crimes, but still faces doubt regarding her recounting of what happened, which includes the killing of her boyfriend. We also follow Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), living in Bali and trying to boost his profile as part of a conservative-influencer duo alongside Ariana (Veronica Long), although his preferred medium involves masculine-focused livestreams, as opposed to the Instagram photos that typically attract CW’s attention.

The actor continues to be terrifically magnetic in the part, which seems especially tailor-made to her strengths. (She also designed CW's striking wardrobe.) While the sequel’s focus leans heavily into CW — the original seemed more balanced between her and Madison — it still works as a tale of dueling investigators, as Madison and CW both use fake accounts, Insta-stalking, and a seemingly limitless travel fund to pursue and/or escape each other. Then again, maybe the vast resources isn’t necessary. Online personalities possess a talent for getting to explore luxurious locales without paying much, an ability that CW echoes with her more overt scheming.

Ingenious Filmmaking and Cinematic Travelogue

The filmmakers behind Influencers appear equally resourceful about finding beautiful places to visit, although they were presumably less nefarious in their methods. The vast majority of the film seems to be shot on location, giving it an authentic gravity that lingers even as numerous sequences consist of a relatively small cast of characters staring at computer or phone screens.

It follows the same logic that made the Bond franchise appear so persistently lavish over the years: Indeed, big action and visual effects can display large spending, but just providing a travelogue of sorts for the audience also feels deeply filmic. This is especially fitting for a narrative so rooted in the coexisting surface-level allure and try-hard grind involved in producing envy-inducing digital content.

Every character in Bali, like those who were in Thailand in the original, appear to enjoy access to impossibly chic modern bungalows; there are movies about lifeguards that don’t show off this much aerial pool footage. These individuals have to convincingly inhabit these lush, remote places to emphasize the uneasy irony of how frequently everyone — even the woman wreaking vengeance on the influencers’ self-centered phoniness — nonetheless devotes much time in the glow of their screens.

Balanced Depictions and Tech-Savvy Tension

At the same time, the director has not crafted a screed against the emptiness of the influencer industry. While it is gratifying to watch CW manipulate different internet celebrities, and a sense reminiscent of Hitchcock of identification lets us to hope she evades capture, Harder is relatively understanding of the major influencer characters. Previously, he keyed into the isolation Madison experienced during supposedly envy-worthy vacations. Here, the director appears confident that just observing Jacob in action will reveal that he is selling false masculinity to other gullible men; he resists turning into a caricature the character further. He even gives Jacob a degree of respect through depicting his true devotion to his girlfriend; he is two-faced, yet Ariana is a collaborator in his double standards, not a victim of it.

The other side of Harder’s even-keeled presentation means it may occasionally seem as if he is acknowledging bits of modern online life without deeply exploring them further. This is especially true regarding how he brings AI into the plot, an intriguing development that lacks the psychological edge it should have. The retitled sequel for the film might give fans of the first movie hope for an Aliens-style escalation, and the movie does eventually provide that, with an appropriately wild final act. However, initially, it’s more like a polished Alfred Hitchcock movie than an frenzied, technology-obsessed De Palma-style shocker. Influencers’ heavy use of actual places may also be what keeps 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.