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“Everything about this smells like a bad TV movie,” remarks a cynical podcaster midway through the chilling follow-up Influencers. In the moment, he’s being dismissive in a calculated way of a guest 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 films on demand chronicling a young woman who insinuates herself into the lives of online influencers before killing them seems like a modern-day version of a tawdry but cable-ready weekly TV movie. The surprising aspect about Influencers remains how much better it proves to be compared to much of its competition, regardless of where you watch it. It is precisely the suspense film that should give other movies a bad case of FOMO.

Recapping the Original and Setting the Stage

2022’s Influencer follows the mysterious CW (Cassandra Naud) while she methodically selects traveling alone influencer targets, entices them to their doom, and conceals those murders (at least temporarily) by taking control of their socials. The film leaves off (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, when returning writer-director the director resumes with the character CW happily living alongside her partner Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. On a journey marking the couple’s one-year anniversary, British influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) draws CW's attention and ire.

CW remarks to her partner that a person ought to attempt leaving a device-obsessed online personality somewhere without any devices to see if they can make it. Is this a backstory prequel? Did CW become extremist after witnessing the preferential treatment afforded one fame-seeker?

Evolving Viewpoints and Global Pursuits

The narrative viewpoint shifts several more times, ultimately revealing those introductory moments' chronological position. The story revisits Madison, who has been cleared of carrying out CW's offenses, yet still encounters suspicion over her recounting of the events, which includes the murder of her boyfriend. We also follow Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), based in Bali attempting to boost his profile as part of a right-wing-influencer power couple with Ariana (Veronica Long), although his preferred medium involves masculine-focused livestreams, as opposed to the curated images that typically capture CW's interest.

Naud remains immensely captivating in the part, a role that appears particularly tailor-made for her talents. (She also designed CW's striking outfits.) While the sequel’s screentime balance leans heavily into CW — the original seemed more balanced between her and Madison — it still functions as a tale of dueling investigators, with both women employ fabricated profiles, Insta-stalking, and a seemingly limitless travel fund to chase or evade one another. Then again, perhaps the vast resources aren't needed. Influencers have a talent for getting to explore posh places at little cost, an ability that CW echoes with her more overt scheming.

Resourceful Production and Visual Wanderlust

The creative team for Influencers appear equally resourceful in locating beautiful places to film, although they were likely less nefarious in their methods. Most of the film seems to be shot on location, giving it an authentic gravity that remains even when many scenes consist of a relatively small cast of characters looking at digital devices.

It’s the same principle which allowed the James Bond movies look so persistently lavish for decades: Indeed, explosive action and visual effects can show off large spending, but simply offering a travelogue of sorts to viewers also feels deeply filmic. It’s also especially fitting for a narrative so dependent on the coexisting 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; there are movies concerning beach rescuers that don’t show off this much overhead swimming-pool footage. The characters must believably inhabit these lush, remote places to highlight the uncomfortable paradox of how frequently each person — even the woman exacting revenge on the influencers’ 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 rant targeting the vacuousness of online fame. While it is gratifying to see CW manipulate various online personalities, and a sense reminiscent of Hitchcock of identification allows us to hope she evades capture, Harder is somewhat sympathetic to the key influencer figures. In the first movie, he tapped into the isolation Madison felt during supposedly dream getaways. In this film, the director appears confident that merely watching Jacob at work will reveal that he is selling snake-oil masculinity to other doofuses; he resists turning into a caricature the character further. He even grants Jacob a measure of dignity by showing his genuine loyalty to his girlfriend; he’s a hypocrite, yet Ariana is a partner in his hypocrisy, not someone exploited of it.

The flip side of this balanced approach is that it may occasionally seem as if he’s nodding at bits of contemporary digital culture without deeply exploring them further. This is especially true regarding how he introduces artificial intelligence into the story, an intriguing development that lacks the psychosexual kick it should have. 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 an appropriately wild final act. However, initially, it resembles more a polished Hitchcock thriller than a frenzied, tech-addled Brian De Palma thriller. Influencers’ extensive use of real-world locations might also be what keeps it from coming across like pure nightmare fuel. Our society might be saturated with content-churning influencers, digital deception, and exploitative travel, but the world itself is still here, for now.