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“This whole affair reeks of a bad made-for-TV,” remarks an opportunistic podcaster during the chilling follow-up Influencers. In the moment, his tone is manipulatively dismissive toward an interviewee whose bizarre tale he previously said he trusted. But his description of the events in the movie isn’t wrong. On its face, two streaming movies chronicling a woman who worms her way 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 surprising aspect about Influencers remains how much better it proves to be compared to much of its competition, regardless of screen size. It is precisely the suspense film that should give other movies a bad case of FOMO.

Recapping the Original and Establishing the Scene

The 2022 film Influencer follows the mysterious CW (Cassandra Naud) as she methodically selects traveling alone influencer targets, lures them to their deaths, and conceals those murders (for a time) by taking control of their socials. The film leaves off (spoiler ahead) with CW stranded on a deserted island off the coast of Thailand, following her latest target, Madison (Emily Tennant), reverses their roles on her.

This provides the 2025 Influencers some early mystery, as returning filmmaker Kurtis David Harder picks up with CW contentedly residing alongside her partner Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. On a journey to celebrate their first anniversary, UK-based influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) draws CW's attention and anger.

CW remarks to her partner that a person ought to attempt leaving a device-obsessed influencer in a place without any devices to see if they can make it. Are we witnessing an origin-story prequel? Was CW radicalized by seeing the preferential treatment given to 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, now cleared of carrying out CW's offenses, but still faces suspicion regarding her recounting of what happened, which includes the murder of Madison’s boyfriend. The film also follows Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), based in Bali attempting to juice his career as half of a conservative-influencer power couple with Ariana (Veronica Long), although his preferred medium involves masculine-focused livestreams, as opposed to the curated images that normally attract CW’s attention.

The actor continues to be immensely captivating in the part, which seems particularly tailor-made for her talents. (She also designed CW's striking wardrobe.) Although the follow-up's screentime balance leans heavily into CW — the original felt more equally divided between the two women — it still works as a tale of rival amateur detectives, with both women employ fake accounts, Insta-stalking, and a seemingly limitless travel fund to pursue and/or escape one another. Of course, maybe the unlimited budget isn’t necessary. Influencers have a talent for gaining access to posh places without paying much, a skill which CW mirrors through her more blatant scamming.

Ingenious Filmmaking and Visual Wanderlust

The filmmakers behind Influencers appear equally ingenious in locating beautiful places to film, though they were presumably more legitimate about it. Most of the movie appears to be filmed in real places, giving it a real-world weight that lingers even when numerous sequences consist of a handful of actors of characters looking at digital devices.

It follows the same logic which allowed the James Bond movies look so persistently lavish over the years: Indeed, explosive action and visual effects can display large spending, but just providing a travelogue of sorts for the audience also seems deeply filmic. This is especially fitting for a story so dependent on the coexisting superficial glamour and try-hard grind involved in producing envy-inducing online content.

All of the characters in Bali, similar to those staying in Thailand in the original, appear to enjoy access to unbelievably stylish modern bungalows; there are movies concerning beach rescuers that don’t show off as much overhead swimming-pool video. The characters have to convincingly inhabit these luxurious, remote places to highlight the uneasy irony of how often each person — including the woman wreaking vengeance upon the online stars' self-centered phoniness — nonetheless devotes much time under the light of their screens.

Nuanced Portrayals and Digital-Age Suspense

At the same time, Harder hasn’t authored a rant targeting the vacuousness of the influencer industry. Though it is gratifying to watch CW exploit different internet celebrities, and a sense reminiscent of Hitchcock of identification allows us to hope she evades capture, the filmmaker is somewhat sympathetic to the major influencer characters. In the first movie, he keyed into the loneliness Madison felt while on ostensibly dream getaways. Here, the director appears confident that merely watching Jacob in action will make it clear that he is selling false masculinity to other doofuses; he resists caricaturing the character further. He even grants Jacob a measure of dignity by showing his genuine loyalty to his partner; he’s a hypocrite, but Ariana is a collaborator in his hypocrisy, not a victim by it.

The flip side of this balanced approach means it can sometimes appear that he’s nodding at elements of contemporary digital culture without deeply exploring them further. This is particularly evident regarding how he introduces artificial intelligence into the plot, an intriguing development which misses the psychosexual kick it deserves. The retitled sequel of Influencers might give fans of the first movie expectations of an Aliens-style ante-upping, and the film ultimately delivers exactly that, with an appropriately chaotic climax. But before that, it’s more like a polished Alfred Hitchcock movie than a frenzied, technology-obsessed De Palma-style shocker. Influencers’ extensive use of real-world locations might also be what keeps it from coming across like pure nightmare fuel. Our society may be overrun with content-churning influencers, digital deception, and exploitative travel, but the world itself remains present, for now.