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“Everything about this reeks like a bad made-for-TV,” observes a cynical 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 on screen isn't inaccurate. On its face, a pair of streaming movies chronicling a young woman who worms her way into the lives of social media stars before killing them feels like the 21st-century equivalent of a tawdry yet cable-ready Movie of the Week. The wild thing about Influencers remains how much better it is than plenty of the competition, regardless of where you watch it. It is precisely the suspense film capable of giving its peers a bad case of FOMO.

Revisiting the First Film and Setting the Stage

2022’s Influencer tracks the mysterious CW (Cassandra Naud) as she quietly chooses traveling alone social media targets, entices them to their deaths, and covers up those murders (at least temporarily) by seizing control of their socials. The movie concludes (spoiler ahead) with CW marooned on a deserted island off the coast of Thailand, after her latest target, Madison (Emily Tennant), turns the tables on her.

This provides 2025's Influencers a degree of mystery, when returning filmmaker the director resumes with CW happily living with her girlfriend Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. On a journey to celebrate the couple’s first anniversary, British influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) draws CW's attention and anger.

CW remarks to Diane that someone should try leaving a device-obsessed online personality somewhere without any devices and see if they can survive. Are we witnessing a backstory prequel? Was CW radicalized by seeing the preferential treatment given to a single clout-chaser?

Evolving Viewpoints and International Chases

The story’s perspective shifts several more times, eventually clarifying those early scenes’ place in the timeline. Harder catches up with Madison, who has been exonerated for committing CW’s crimes, yet still encounters suspicion regarding her version of what happened, which includes the killing of her boyfriend. The film also follows Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), living in Bali attempting to juice his career as part of a right-wing-influencer duo with Ariana (Veronica Long), though his preferred medium is bro-heavy streams, rather than the curated images that typically capture CW's interest.

Naud remains immensely captivating in her role, a role that appears especially custom-fit for her talents. (She also designed CW's eye-catching wardrobe.) Although the sequel’s screentime balance tips heavily toward CW — the first film seemed more balanced between the two women — it still functions as a tale of dueling investigators, with both women both use fake accounts, Insta-stalking, and an apparently limitless travel fund to chase and/or escape one another. Of course, perhaps the vast resources aren't needed. Online personalities possess a talent 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 appear equally resourceful about finding beautiful places to visit, although they were presumably more legitimate in their methods. Most of the movie seems to be shot on location, providing it an authentic gravity that lingers even as numerous sequences consist of a relatively small cast of characters looking at computer or phone screens.

It follows the same logic which allowed the James Bond movies appear so consistently opulent for decades: Indeed, explosive action and special effects can show off large spending, however just providing a travelogue of sorts for the audience also seems deeply filmic. It’s also especially fitting for a story so rooted in the coexisting superficial glamour and try-hard grind of creating jealousy-worthy online content.

Every character in Bali, like those who were in Thailand in the first film, appear to enjoy entry to unbelievably stylish modern bungalows; films exist concerning beach rescuers which don't feature this much aerial pool video. These individuals must believably inhabit these luxurious, far-flung locations to highlight the uncomfortable paradox of how often each person — including the woman wreaking vengeance upon the online stars' narcissistic falseness — nevertheless devotes much time under the light of their screens.

Nuanced Portrayals and Tech-Savvy Tension

At the same time, the director has not crafted a screed targeting the emptiness of online fame. While it is satisfying to watch CW exploit various online personalities, and a sense reminiscent of Hitchcock of identification lets us to wish she evades capture, the filmmaker is relatively sympathetic to the key influencer figures. Previously, he keyed into the loneliness Madison felt while on supposedly envy-worthy vacations. In this film, the director appears confident that merely watching Jacob at work will make it clear 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 genuine loyalty to his partner; he is two-faced, yet Ariana is a partner in his double standards, not someone exploited of it.

The flip side of this balanced approach is that it may occasionally seem that he is acknowledging elements of modern online life without investigating them. This is particularly evident of the way he introduces artificial intelligence into the plot, an intriguing development that lacks the psychosexual kick it should have. The pluralized title of Influencers might give devotees of the original expectations of a larger-scale ante-upping, and the movie does eventually provide that, with a suitably chaotic climax. But before that, it resembles more a sleek Alfred Hitchcock movie than a frenzied, technology-obsessed De Palma-style shocker. Influencers’ extensive use of real-world locations may 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 is still here, at least for now.