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“Everything about this reeks of a cheap TV movie,” remarks an opportunistic commentator midway through the chilling follow-up Influencers. At that point, he’s being dismissive in a calculated way of a guest with an bizarre tale he previously said he trusted. But his description of what’s happening on screen isn’t wrong. On its face, two streaming movies chronicling a young woman who insinuates herself into the lives of online influencers and then murders them seems like the 21st-century equivalent of a tawdry yet network-approved Movie of the Week. The wild thing about Influencers is how much better it is than plenty of its competition, irrespective of screen size. It is precisely the suspense film capable of giving other movies a serious bout of FOMO.

Revisiting the Original and Establishing the Scene

2022’s Influencer follows the mysterious CW (Cassandra Naud) as she quietly chooses solo-traveling social media targets, lures 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, after her most recent mark, Madison (Emily Tennant), reverses their roles against her.

This provides the 2025 Influencers a degree of ambiguity, as returning writer-director the director picks up with CW happily living alongside her partner Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. During a trip to celebrate their first anniversary, British influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) catches CW's attention and ire.

CW comments to her partner that someone should try leaving a device-obsessed online personality somewhere without any devices to see if they can survive. Are we witnessing an origin-story prequel? Did CW become extremist by seeing the special treatment afforded one fame-seeker?

Evolving Viewpoints and Global Pursuits

The narrative viewpoint changes multiple times, eventually clarifying those early scenes’ place in the timeline. The story revisits Madison, now exonerated for committing CW's offenses, but still faces doubt over her recounting of what happened, including the killing of her boyfriend. The film also follows Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), based in Bali attempting to boost his profile as part of a right-wing-influencer duo with Ariana (Veronica Long), though his preferred medium involves masculine-focused livestreams, as opposed to the Instagram photos that normally capture CW’s attention.

Naud remains terrifically magnetic in the part, a role that appears especially custom-fit to her strengths. (She also designed CW's striking wardrobe.) Although the sequel’s screentime balance tips heavily toward CW — the first film seemed more balanced between the two women — it still works as a tale of rival investigators, with both women both use fake accounts, Insta-stalking, and a seemingly limitless travel fund to chase or evade each other. Of course, perhaps the vast resources isn’t necessary. Online personalities possess a knack for getting to explore posh places without paying much, a skill which CW mirrors through her more blatant scheming.

Resourceful Production and Cinematic Travelogue

The creative team for Influencers seem similarly resourceful about finding beautiful places to visit, although they were presumably less nefarious about it. The vast majority of the film appears to be shot on location, providing it an authentic gravity that lingers even as numerous sequences consist of a relatively small cast of characters staring at digital devices.

It’s the same principle that made the James Bond movies appear so persistently lavish for decades: Yes, explosive action and special effects can show off large spending, however simply offering a kind of visual tour for the audience also feels deeply filmic. This is particularly appropriate for a story so rooted in the simultaneous surface-level allure and desperate hustle of creating envy-inducing digital content.

Every character visiting Bali, like those who were in Thailand in the original, appear to enjoy access to impossibly chic contemporary villas; films exist concerning beach rescuers which don't feature as much aerial pool footage. These individuals have to convincingly inhabit these lush, far-flung locations to highlight the uneasy irony of how often everyone — even the woman wreaking vengeance upon the online stars' narcissistic falseness — nevertheless devotes much time in the glow of their devices.

Balanced Depictions and Tech-Savvy Tension

Simultaneously, the director has not crafted a rant against the emptiness of online fame. Though it is gratifying to see CW manipulate various online personalities, and a sense reminiscent of Hitchcock of alignment lets us to hope she doesn’t get caught, the filmmaker is somewhat sympathetic to the key influencer figures. In the first movie, he keyed into the isolation Madison felt during supposedly envy-worthy vacations. Here, the director appears confident that just observing Jacob at work will reveal that he is selling snake-oil masculinity to other doofuses; he avoids turning into a caricature the character. He even grants Jacob a measure of dignity by showing his true devotion to his girlfriend; he’s a hypocrite, yet Ariana is a collaborator in his double standards, not a victim by it.

The flip side of Harder’s even-keeled presentation means it can sometimes appear as if he’s nodding at bits of modern online life without deeply exploring them further. This is especially true of the way he introduces artificial intelligence into the story, an intriguing development that lacks the psychological edge it deserves. The retitled sequel of Influencers could offer fans of the first movie hope for an Aliens-style escalation, and the movie does eventually provide exactly that, with an appropriately chaotic climax. But before that, it’s more like a sleek Alfred Hitchcock movie than a wild-eyed, technology-obsessed Brian De Palma thriller. Influencers’ heavy use of actual places might also be what keeps it from coming across like utter horror. Our society might be saturated with content-churning influencers, digital deception, and exploitative travel, but the world itself is still here, for now.