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“The entire situation stinks like a cheap TV movie,” states an opportunistic commentator during the chilling follow-up Influencers. At that point, he’s being manipulatively dismissive of a guest whose outlandish story he once said he trusted. Yet his description of the events on screen isn’t wrong. Superficially, a pair of films on demand chronicling a woman who worms her way into the worlds of social media stars before killing them feels like a modern-day version of a lurid but cable-ready Movie of the Week. The wild thing about Influencers is how much better it proves to be compared to much of its competition, irrespective of where you watch it. It’s the kind of suspense film capable of giving its peers a serious bout of FOMO.

Revisiting the Original and Setting the Stage

2022’s Influencer follows the enigmatic CW (Cassandra Naud) while she methodically selects solo-traveling influencer targets, entices them to their deaths, and covers up those deaths (at least temporarily) by taking control of their socials. The movie concludes (spoiler ahead) with CW stranded on a deserted 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 ambiguity, when returning filmmaker the director picks up with CW contentedly residing alongside her partner Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. On a journey to celebrate the couple’s first anniversary, British influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) draws CW’s eye and ire.

CW remarks to Diane that someone ought to attempt stranding a device-obsessed influencer somewhere with no technology to see if they can make it. Are we witnessing a backstory prequel? Was CW radicalized by seeing the preferential treatment afforded one fame-seeker?

Evolving Viewpoints and International Chases

The story’s perspective shifts several more times, ultimately revealing those early scenes’ chronological position. The story revisits Madison, now cleared of committing CW’s crimes, but still faces doubt over her recounting of what happened, which includes the killing of her boyfriend. We also follow Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), based in Bali and trying to boost his profile as part of a right-wing-influencer power couple alongside Ariana (Veronica Long), although his preferred medium involves masculine-focused livestreams, rather than the curated images that normally attract CW’s attention.

Naud remains immensely captivating in her role, a role that appears especially tailor-made for her talents. (She even created CW's eye-catching wardrobe.) Although the follow-up's screentime balance tips heavily toward 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 employ fabricated profiles, social media surveillance, and an apparently unlimited travel budget to chase and/or escape each other. Of course, perhaps the unlimited budget aren't needed. Influencers have a talent for gaining access to posh places at little cost, an ability that CW echoes through her more blatant scheming.

Resourceful Production and Visual Wanderlust

The filmmakers behind Influencers seem similarly ingenious about finding stunning locations to visit, although they were presumably more legitimate about it. Most of the film seems to be filmed in real places, giving it an authentic gravity that lingers even as numerous sequences involve a handful of actors of people looking at digital devices.

It follows the same logic that made the Bond franchise look so persistently lavish for decades: Indeed, explosive action and visual effects can display large spending, however just providing a kind of visual tour to viewers also seems inherently cinematic. It’s also particularly appropriate for a narrative so rooted in the coexisting superficial glamour and desperate hustle involved in producing envy-inducing digital content.

Every character in Bali, like those who were in Thailand in the first film, seem to have entry to impossibly chic modern bungalows; there are movies about lifeguards that don’t show off this much overhead swimming-pool video. The characters must believably inhabit these lush, remote places to emphasize the uneasy irony of how often everyone — including the woman wreaking vengeance upon the online stars' self-centered phoniness — nevertheless spends plenty of time in the glow of their devices.

Balanced Depictions and Tech-Savvy Tension

Simultaneously, Harder hasn’t authored a screed targeting the emptiness of the influencer industry. Though it is gratifying to watch CW exploit various online personalities, and a Hitchcockian sense of identification allows us to hope she doesn’t get caught, the filmmaker is relatively understanding of the key influencer figures. In the first movie, he keyed into the isolation Madison felt while on ostensibly envy-worthy vacations. Here, Harder seems to trust that just observing Jacob at work will make it clear that he’s peddling false masculinity to other gullible men; he resists caricaturing the character further. He even gives Jacob a degree of respect by showing his true devotion to his partner; he is two-faced, yet Ariana is a partner in his hypocrisy, not a victim by it.

The other side of this balanced approach is that it can sometimes appear as if he’s nodding at bits of modern online life without deeply exploring them. This is particularly evident regarding how he introduces artificial intelligence into the plot, an intriguing development which misses the psychological edge it deserves. The retitled sequel for the film might give devotees of the original expectations of a larger-scale escalation, and the movie ultimately delivers exactly that, with a suitably chaotic climax. But before that, it resembles more a sleek Hitchcock thriller than a wild-eyed, technology-obsessed Brian De Palma thriller. Influencers’ extensive use of real-world locations may also be what keeps it from seeming like utter horror. The world may be overrun with always-online creators, online fraud, and self-serving tourism, but the world itself is still here, for now.