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“This whole affair stinks like a cheap made-for-TV,” remarks a cynical commentator during the chilling follow-up Influencers. At that point, he’s being dismissive in a calculated way toward an interviewee with an outlandish story he once claimed he believed. Yet his description of what’s happening on screen isn’t wrong. On its face, two films on demand about a woman who worms her way into the lives of social media stars before killing them seems like a modern-day version of a lurid but network-approved weekly TV movie. The wild thing about Influencers is how much better it proves to be than plenty of its competition, regardless of screen size. It’s the kind of suspense film that should give its peers a bad case of FOMO.

Recapping the First Film and Setting the Stage

2022’s Influencer follows the enigmatic CW (Cassandra Naud) while she methodically selects solo-traveling influencer targets, entices them to their deaths, and covers up those deaths (for a time) 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), turns the tables on her.

This provides 2025's Influencers some early ambiguity, when returning writer-director the director resumes with CW contentedly residing alongside her partner Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. On a journey to celebrate their one-year anniversary, British influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) catches CW’s eye and ire.

CW remarks to her partner that a person ought to attempt stranding a device-obsessed online personality in a place without any devices to see whether they can make it. Are we witnessing an origin-story prequel? Did CW become extremist after witnessing the preferential treatment afforded a single clout-chaser?

Shifting Perspectives and Global Pursuits

The narrative viewpoint shifts several more times, ultimately revealing those introductory moments' place in the timeline. Harder catches up with Madison, now exonerated for carrying out CW’s crimes, but still faces suspicion regarding her version of the events, which includes the killing of her boyfriend. We also follow Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), living in Bali attempting to juice his career as half of a conservative-influencer power couple alongside Ariana (Veronica Long), though his chosen platform involves masculine-focused livestreams, as opposed to the Instagram photos that typically attract CW's interest.

Naud remains terrifically magnetic in her role, which seems particularly tailor-made for her talents. (She also designed CW's eye-catching outfits.) While the follow-up's focus leans heavily into CW — the first film seemed more balanced between the two women — it still works as a tale of dueling amateur detectives, as Madison and CW both use fake accounts, Insta-stalking, and a seemingly unlimited travel budget to chase and/or escape one another. Of course, perhaps the unlimited budget aren't needed. Online personalities possess a knack for getting to explore posh places without paying much, an ability which CW mirrors with her more overt scheming.

Resourceful Production and Cinematic Travelogue

The creative team for Influencers seem similarly resourceful about finding beautiful places to visit, although they were presumably more legitimate about it. Most of the movie appears to be shot on location, providing it an authentic gravity that lingers even as many scenes consist of a handful of actors of characters staring at computer or phone screens.

It follows the same logic that made the James Bond movies look so persistently lavish over the years: Indeed, explosive action and special effects can display a big budget, but simply offering a kind of visual tour to viewers also feels deeply filmic. It’s also especially fitting for a story so dependent on the simultaneous superficial glamour and desperate hustle of creating envy-inducing digital content.

Every character in Bali, similar to those staying in Thailand in the original, appear to enjoy access to impossibly chic contemporary villas; films exist about lifeguards which don't feature this much overhead swimming-pool video. The characters must believably occupy these lush, remote places to highlight the uneasy irony of how frequently each person — even the woman wreaking vengeance upon the online stars' narcissistic falseness — nonetheless devotes much time in the glow of their devices.

Nuanced Portrayals and Digital-Age Suspense

At the same time, Harder hasn’t authored a screed against the emptiness of the influencer industry. Though it is satisfying to watch CW manipulate various online personalities, and a sense reminiscent of Hitchcock of identification lets us to hope she evades capture, Harder is somewhat understanding of the key influencer figures. In the first movie, he tapped into the isolation Madison experienced while on supposedly dream getaways. Here, the director appears confident that just observing Jacob at work will reveal that he is selling snake-oil masculinity to other doofuses; he avoids turning into a caricature the character further. He even grants Jacob a measure of dignity through depicting his genuine loyalty to his partner; he is two-faced, but Ariana is a collaborator in his double standards, not someone exploited by it.

The other side of Harder’s even-keeled presentation is that it can sometimes appear that he is acknowledging bits of contemporary digital culture without investigating them further. This is particularly evident of the way he brings AI into the plot, a fascinating turn that lacks the psychosexual kick it deserves. The pluralized title for the film might give devotees of the original expectations of a larger-scale ante-upping, and the movie ultimately delivers that, with a suitably chaotic climax. But before that, it resembles more a sleek Hitchcock thriller than an wild-eyed, tech-addled Brian De Palma thriller. Influencers’ extensive use of real-world locations may also be what keeps it from seeming like pure nightmare fuel. Our society may be overrun with always-online creators, digital deception, and exploitative travel, but the world itself remains present, at least for now.