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“The entire situation stinks like a bad TV movie,” states an opportunistic commentator midway through the chilling follow-up Influencers. In the moment, he’s being manipulatively dismissive of a guest whose outlandish story he once said he trusted. Yet his description of what’s happening on screen isn’t wrong. On its face, two films on demand about a young woman who worms her way into the lives of online influencers and then murders them feels like the 21st-century equivalent of a tawdry but cable-ready Movie of the Week. The wild thing regarding Influencers remains just how superior it is than plenty of its competition, irrespective of where you watch it. It is precisely the suspense film capable of giving other movies a bad case of FOMO.

Revisiting the Original and Setting the Stage

The 2022 film Influencer follows the enigmatic CW (Cassandra Naud) while she methodically selects solo-traveling influencer targets, entices them to their deaths, and conceals those murders (for a time) by seizing control of their socials. The film leaves off (spoiler ahead) with CW marooned on an uninhabited island off the coast of Thailand, following her latest target, Madison (Emily Tennant), reverses their roles on her.

This provides 2025's Influencers a degree of ambiguity, when returning writer-director the director picks up with CW happily living with her girlfriend Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. On a journey marking the couple’s first anniversary, British influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) draws CW’s eye and ire.

CW remarks to Diane that a person ought to attempt leaving a phone-addicted influencer in a place without any devices to see whether they can survive. Is this an origin-story prequel? Did CW become extremist after witnessing the special treatment given to one clout-chaser?

Shifting Perspectives and Global Pursuits

The story’s perspective shifts several more times, eventually clarifying those early scenes’ chronological position. The story revisits Madison, who has been exonerated for committing CW’s crimes, yet still encounters doubt regarding her recounting of what happened, including the killing of Madison’s boyfriend. The film also follows Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), based in Bali attempting to juice his career as part of a right-wing-influencer power couple alongside Ariana (Veronica Long), although his chosen platform is bro-heavy streams, as opposed to the Instagram photos that typically attract CW's interest.

The actor continues to be terrifically magnetic in her role, which seems particularly tailor-made to her strengths. (She also designed CW's eye-catching wardrobe.) Although the sequel’s focus tips heavily toward CW — the original seemed more balanced between the two women — it still functions as a tale of rival investigators, with both women employ fake accounts, Insta-stalking, and an apparently unlimited travel budget to pursue or evade one another. Then again, maybe the vast resources isn’t necessary. Online personalities possess a knack for gaining access to posh places at little cost, an ability which CW mirrors through her more blatant scheming.

Ingenious Filmmaking and Cinematic Travelogue

The filmmakers behind Influencers appear equally resourceful about finding stunning locations to visit, although they were likely less nefarious in their methods. The vast majority of the film appears to be shot on location, providing it a real-world weight that remains even as numerous sequences consist of a relatively small cast of people staring at digital devices.

It’s the same principle that made the Bond franchise look so consistently opulent for decades: Yes, big action and special effects can display large spending, however simply offering a kind of visual tour to viewers also feels inherently cinematic. This is particularly appropriate for a story so rooted in the simultaneous surface-level allure and try-hard grind involved in producing jealousy-worthy online content.

Every character visiting Bali, similar to those staying in Thailand in the original, appear to enjoy access to unbelievably stylish contemporary villas; films exist concerning beach rescuers which don't feature as much overhead swimming-pool video. The characters must believably inhabit these lush, remote places to emphasize the uncomfortable paradox of how often each person — including the woman wreaking vengeance upon the online stars' self-centered phoniness — nonetheless spends plenty of time under the light of their devices.

Nuanced Portrayals and Digital-Age Suspense

Simultaneously, the director has not crafted a screed targeting the vacuousness of online fame. While it is satisfying to see CW exploit different internet celebrities, and a sense reminiscent of Hitchcock of identification lets us to hope she doesn’t get caught, Harder is relatively sympathetic to the major influencer characters. Previously, he tapped into the loneliness Madison felt during supposedly dream getaways. In this film, Harder seems to trust that merely watching Jacob in action will make it clear that he is selling false masculinity to other doofuses; he avoids turning into a caricature the character further. He even gives Jacob a degree of respect by showing his genuine loyalty to his girlfriend; he is two-faced, but Ariana is a collaborator in his hypocrisy, not someone exploited by it.

The flip side of this balanced approach is that it may occasionally seem as if he is acknowledging elements of modern online life without investigating them further. This is particularly evident regarding how he brings AI into the plot, an intriguing development which misses the psychological edge it deserves. The pluralized title for the film might give fans of the first movie hope for an Aliens-style escalation, and the movie does eventually provide exactly that, with an appropriately wild final act. However, initially, it resembles more a sleek Alfred Hitchcock movie than an wild-eyed, technology-obsessed De Palma-style shocker. Influencers’ extensive use of actual places may also be what prevents it from seeming like pure nightmare fuel. The world might be saturated with always-online creators, online fraud, and exploitative travel, but reality itself is still here, at least for now.