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“This whole affair stinks like a cheap TV movie,” states an opportunistic podcaster midway through the chilling follow-up Influencers. In the moment, his tone is manipulatively dismissive toward an interviewee with an bizarre tale he previously claimed he believed. But his description of what’s happening in the movie isn’t wrong. Superficially, two films on demand about a young woman who worms her way into the worlds of social media stars before killing them seems like a modern-day version of a lurid but network-approved Movie of the Week. The surprising aspect about Influencers is how much better it is than plenty of the competition, regardless of where you watch it. It’s the kind of suspense film capable of giving other movies a serious bout of FOMO.

Recapping the First Film and Setting the Stage

The 2022 film Influencer follows the mysterious CW (Cassandra Naud) while she quietly chooses solo-traveling influencer targets, entices them to their deaths, and conceals those murders (at least temporarily) by taking control of their socials. The film concludes (spoiler ahead) with CW marooned on a deserted island off the coast of Thailand, following her most recent mark, Madison (Emily Tennant), turns the tables on her.

This provides the 2025 Influencers some early mystery, as returning filmmaker the director resumes with the character CW contentedly residing with her girlfriend Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. During a trip marking the couple’s first anniversary, British influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) catches CW's attention and ire.

CW comments to her partner that someone ought to attempt leaving a phone-addicted online personality in a place without any devices and see whether they can make it. Is this an origin-story prequel? Did CW become extremist after witnessing the special treatment afforded a single fame-seeker?

Shifting Perspectives and International Chases

The story’s perspective shifts several more times, eventually clarifying those early scenes’ place in the timeline. The story revisits Madison, now exonerated for carrying out CW's offenses, but still faces doubt regarding her recounting of the events, including the murder of her boyfriend. We also follow Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), living in Bali attempting to boost his profile as part of a conservative-influencer power couple with Ariana (Veronica Long), although his preferred medium involves masculine-focused livestreams, rather than the Instagram photos that normally capture CW's interest.

Naud remains immensely captivating in her role, which seems especially custom-fit to her strengths. (She also designed CW's striking wardrobe.) While the follow-up's focus tips heavily toward CW — the first film felt more equally divided between the two women — it still functions as a tale of dueling investigators, with both women employ fake accounts, social media surveillance, and a seemingly unlimited travel budget to chase or evade one another. Of course, maybe the vast resources isn’t necessary. Influencers have a knack for getting to explore posh places at little cost, a skill which CW mirrors through her more blatant scamming.

Resourceful Production and Cinematic Travelogue

The creative team for Influencers appear equally resourceful about finding beautiful places to visit, though they were likely less nefarious about it. The vast majority of the film seems to be shot on location, providing it an authentic gravity that lingers even as many scenes involve a relatively small cast of people looking at digital devices.

It follows the same logic which allowed the James Bond movies look so consistently opulent for decades: Indeed, explosive action and visual effects can display a big budget, however simply offering a travelogue of sorts to viewers also seems deeply filmic. This is particularly appropriate for a story so rooted in the simultaneous surface-level allure and try-hard grind of creating envy-inducing digital content.

All of the characters visiting Bali, like those who were in Thailand in the original, seem to have access to unbelievably stylish contemporary villas; films exist concerning beach rescuers which don't feature this much aerial pool footage. These individuals have to convincingly inhabit these lush, far-flung locations to emphasize the uneasy irony of how frequently everyone — even the woman wreaking vengeance upon the online stars' self-centered phoniness — nevertheless spends plenty of time in the glow of their screens.

Nuanced Portrayals and Tech-Savvy Tension

Simultaneously, Harder hasn’t authored a rant against the emptiness of online fame. While it is satisfying to watch CW manipulate different internet celebrities, and a sense reminiscent of Hitchcock of identification allows us to hope she doesn’t get caught, the filmmaker is relatively sympathetic to the key influencer figures. In the first movie, he keyed into the isolation Madison felt while on ostensibly dream getaways. Here, Harder seems to trust that just observing Jacob at work will make it clear that he’s peddling snake-oil masculinity to other doofuses; he avoids caricaturing the character. He even grants Jacob a measure of dignity by showing his true devotion to his partner; he is two-faced, but Ariana is a collaborator in his double standards, not a victim of it.

The other side of Harder’s even-keeled presentation is that it may occasionally seem as if he’s nodding at elements of contemporary digital culture without deeply exploring them further. This is particularly evident of the way he brings AI into the story, an intriguing development that lacks the psychological edge it should have. The retitled sequel of Influencers might give fans of the first movie expectations of an Aliens-style escalation, and the film ultimately delivers exactly that, with a suitably chaotic climax. But before that, it’s more like a sleek Alfred Hitchcock movie than a frenzied, tech-addled De Palma-style shocker. Influencers’ extensive use of real-world locations might also be what keeps it from coming across like utter horror. The world may be overrun with content-churning influencers, digital deception, and exploitative travel, but reality itself is still here, for now.