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“The entire situation stinks of a bad made-for-TV,” states an opportunistic commentator during the chilling follow-up Influencers. In the moment, he’s being dismissive in a calculated way of a guest whose outlandish story he once said he trusted. But his description of the events in the movie isn't inaccurate. On its face, a pair of streaming movies chronicling a woman who insinuates herself into the worlds of online influencers before killing them seems like a modern-day version of a tawdry but cable-ready weekly TV movie. The surprising aspect regarding Influencers remains just how superior it is compared to much of its competition, regardless of where you watch it. It is precisely the suspense film capable of giving its peers a bad case of FOMO.

Recapping the First Film and Setting the Stage

The 2022 film Influencer tracks the mysterious CW (Cassandra Naud) while she methodically selects traveling alone influencer targets, lures them to their doom, and covers up those deaths (for a time) by taking control of their online accounts. The film concludes (spoiler ahead) with CW marooned on an uninhabited island near the coast of Thailand, after her latest target, Madison (Emily Tennant), turns the tables against her.

This lends 2025's Influencers some early mystery, as returning writer-director the director picks up with CW happily living alongside her partner Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. On a journey to celebrate their one-year anniversary, UK-based influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) draws CW’s eye and anger.

CW remarks to Diane that a person ought to attempt stranding a device-obsessed influencer somewhere without any devices to see if they can survive. Are we witnessing a backstory prequel? Was CW radicalized by seeing the preferential treatment given to one clout-chaser?

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, who has been cleared of committing CW’s crimes, yet still encounters doubt regarding her version of what happened, which includes the murder of her boyfriend. The film also follows Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), living in Bali and trying to juice his career as part of a conservative-influencer duo alongside Ariana (Veronica Long), though his chosen platform is bro-heavy streams, as opposed to the Instagram photos that normally capture CW's interest.

Naud remains terrifically magnetic in the part, a role that appears especially tailor-made to her strengths. (She even created CW's eye-catching outfits.) While the sequel’s focus leans heavily into CW — the first film felt more equally divided between her and Madison — it still functions as a tale of dueling amateur detectives, with both women employ fabricated profiles, Insta-stalking, and a seemingly limitless travel fund to chase and/or escape each other. Then again, maybe the unlimited budget isn’t necessary. Online personalities possess a knack for gaining access to posh places at little cost, a skill that CW echoes with her more overt scamming.

Resourceful Production and Visual Wanderlust

The creative team for Influencers seem similarly ingenious about finding beautiful places to visit, although they were presumably less nefarious about it. The vast majority of the movie appears to be shot on location, giving it an authentic gravity that remains even when numerous sequences involve a relatively small cast of characters looking at digital devices.

It’s the same principle that made the James Bond movies appear so persistently lavish for decades: Yes, explosive action and visual effects can display large spending, however simply offering a travelogue of sorts to viewers also seems inherently cinematic. This is especially fitting for a story so dependent on the coexisting superficial glamour and desperate hustle of creating envy-inducing online content.

All of the characters visiting Bali, similar to those who were in Thailand in the original, appear to enjoy access to unbelievably stylish contemporary villas; films exist about lifeguards that don’t show off as much overhead swimming-pool video. The characters must believably inhabit these lush, remote places to highlight the uncomfortable paradox of how frequently everyone — even the woman wreaking vengeance on the influencers’ narcissistic falseness — nonetheless devotes much time under the light of their screens.

Balanced Depictions and Digital-Age Suspense

At the same time, Harder hasn’t authored a screed targeting the vacuousness of online fame. While it is gratifying to see CW exploit different internet celebrities, and a sense reminiscent of Hitchcock of identification allows us to wish she doesn’t get caught, Harder is relatively understanding of the key influencer figures. In the first movie, he keyed into the isolation Madison experienced while on supposedly dream getaways. Here, the director appears confident that just observing Jacob at work will make it clear that he is selling false masculinity to other gullible men; he avoids turning into a caricature 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 double standards, not someone exploited of it.

The other side of this balanced approach means it may occasionally seem that he’s nodding at bits of contemporary digital culture without investigating them. This is particularly evident regarding how he introduces artificial intelligence into the story, an intriguing development which misses the psychological edge it should have. The retitled sequel for the film might give devotees of the original expectations of a larger-scale escalation, and the film does eventually provide exactly that, with an appropriately wild final act. However, initially, it resembles more a polished Hitchcock thriller than an wild-eyed, technology-obsessed De Palma-style shocker. Influencers’ extensive use of real-world locations might also be what prevents it from seeming like utter horror. The world may be overrun with content-churning influencers, online fraud, and self-serving tourism, but reality itself remains present, at least for now.