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“Everything about this reeks like a bad TV movie,” remarks an opportunistic commentator during the chilling follow-up Influencers. In the moment, he’s being manipulatively dismissive toward an interviewee with an outlandish story he once claimed he believed. But his assessment of what’s happening on screen isn’t wrong. Superficially, a pair of 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 lurid yet network-approved Movie of the Week. The surprising aspect about Influencers remains how much better it is than plenty of the competition, regardless of screen size. It is precisely the suspense film that should give its peers a serious bout of FOMO.

Recapping the First Film and Setting the Stage

2022’s Influencer follows the enigmatic CW (Cassandra Naud) while she quietly chooses traveling alone social media targets, lures them to their doom, and conceals those deaths (at least temporarily) by taking control of their socials. The movie leaves off (spoiler ahead) with CW marooned on an uninhabited island near the coast of Thailand, following her latest target, Madison (Emily Tennant), reverses their roles against her.

This provides the 2025 Influencers some early mystery, when returning filmmaker Kurtis David Harder picks up with CW happily living alongside her partner Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. On a journey marking the couple’s first anniversary, UK-based influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) catches CW’s eye and ire.

CW comments to her partner that a person ought to attempt stranding a device-obsessed influencer in a place with no technology and see whether they can survive. Are we witnessing a backstory prequel? Was CW radicalized by seeing the preferential treatment given to one fame-seeker?

Shifting Perspectives and Global Pursuits

The story’s perspective shifts several more times, ultimately revealing those introductory moments' place in the timeline. Harder catches up with Madison, who has been cleared of committing CW’s crimes, yet still encounters doubt over her recounting of the events, which includes the murder of her boyfriend. We also follow Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), living in Bali and trying to boost his profile as part of a conservative-influencer power couple with Ariana (Veronica Long), though his chosen platform involves masculine-focused livestreams, rather than the curated images that typically attract CW's interest.

The actor continues to be terrifically magnetic in her role, which seems especially tailor-made for her talents. (She even created CW's striking wardrobe.) While the follow-up's focus leans heavily into CW — the first film felt more equally divided between the two women — it still works as a tale of dueling investigators, as Madison and CW both use fake accounts, Insta-stalking, and an apparently limitless travel fund to chase or evade one another. Of course, perhaps the vast resources isn’t necessary. Online personalities possess a talent for getting to explore luxurious locales at little cost, an ability which CW mirrors with her more overt scheming.

Ingenious Filmmaking and Cinematic Travelogue

The filmmakers behind Influencers seem similarly resourceful in locating beautiful places to visit, although they were likely more legitimate in their methods. The vast majority of the movie appears to be filmed in real places, giving it a real-world weight that lingers even when many scenes involve a relatively small cast of characters staring at computer or phone screens.

It follows the same logic which allowed the James Bond movies look so consistently opulent for decades: Yes, big action and special effects can display large spending, but simply offering a travelogue of sorts to viewers also seems inherently cinematic. It’s also especially fitting for a narrative so rooted in the coexisting superficial glamour and desperate hustle of creating jealousy-worthy digital content.

Every character visiting Bali, like those staying in Thailand in the original, appear to enjoy entry to impossibly chic contemporary villas; there are movies concerning beach rescuers which don't feature as much overhead swimming-pool video. The characters must believably occupy these lush, far-flung locations to highlight the uncomfortable paradox of how often each person — including the woman exacting revenge upon the online stars' narcissistic falseness — nevertheless devotes much time under the light of their screens.

Nuanced Portrayals and Tech-Savvy Tension

At the same time, Harder hasn’t authored a rant against the vacuousness of the influencer industry. While it can be gratifying to watch CW exploit various online personalities, and a sense reminiscent of Hitchcock of identification lets us to wish she doesn’t get caught, Harder is relatively sympathetic to the major influencer characters. Previously, he tapped into the isolation Madison experienced while on supposedly dream getaways. In this film, the director appears confident that just observing Jacob at work will reveal that he is selling snake-oil masculinity to other doofuses; he avoids caricaturing the character. He even grants Jacob a degree of respect through depicting his genuine loyalty to his girlfriend; he is two-faced, but Ariana is a partner in his hypocrisy, not a victim of it.

The flip side of this balanced approach is that it can sometimes appear that he’s nodding at bits of modern online life without investigating them. This is especially true of the way he brings AI into the story, a fascinating turn which misses the psychosexual kick it deserves. The pluralized title for the film might give fans of the first movie hope for a larger-scale escalation, and the movie ultimately delivers that, with an appropriately wild final act. However, initially, it’s more like a polished Alfred Hitchcock movie than a frenzied, tech-addled De Palma-style shocker. Influencers’ extensive use of actual places may also be what prevents it from seeming like pure nightmare fuel. Our society might be saturated with content-churning influencers, digital deception, and exploitative travel, but reality itself is still here, at least for now.