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“The entire situation stinks of a cheap made-for-TV,” remarks a cynical commentator during the chilling follow-up Influencers. In the moment, his tone is dismissive in a calculated way of a guest with an bizarre tale he once claimed he believed. Yet his description of what’s happening in the movie isn’t wrong. On its face, two films on demand about a woman who insinuates herself into the worlds of online influencers and then murders them seems 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 is compared to much of the competition, irrespective of where you watch it. It’s the kind of suspense film capable of giving its peers a bad case of FOMO.

Revisiting the First Film and Setting the Stage

2022’s Influencer follows the mysterious CW (Cassandra Naud) as she methodically selects traveling alone influencer targets, entices them to their doom, and covers up those murders (at least temporarily) by taking control of their online accounts. The film leaves off (spoiler ahead) with CW marooned on an uninhabited island off the coast of Thailand, following her latest target, Madison (Emily Tennant), turns the tables on her.

This provides 2025's Influencers a degree of ambiguity, when returning writer-director Kurtis David Harder picks up with CW contentedly residing with her girlfriend Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. During a trip to celebrate their one-year anniversary, UK-based influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) draws CW's attention and ire.

CW remarks to Diane that someone should try stranding a device-obsessed influencer in a place with no technology and see whether they can make it. Is this an origin-story prequel? Was CW radicalized by seeing the special treatment given to a single clout-chaser?

Evolving Viewpoints and International Chases

The narrative viewpoint changes multiple times, ultimately revealing those early scenes’ place in the timeline. The story revisits Madison, who has been cleared of carrying out CW’s crimes, yet still encounters doubt regarding her version of what happened, including the killing 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 preferred medium is bro-heavy streams, as opposed to the Instagram photos that typically attract CW's interest.

Naud remains terrifically magnetic in the part, which seems particularly tailor-made for her talents. (She also designed CW's eye-catching wardrobe.) Although the follow-up's screentime balance leans heavily into CW — the first film felt more equally divided between the two women — it still works as a story of rival amateur detectives, as Madison and CW employ fabricated profiles, social media surveillance, and a seemingly unlimited travel budget to pursue or evade one another. Then again, maybe the vast resources aren't needed. Online personalities possess a knack for gaining access to posh places at little cost, a skill that CW echoes with her more overt scamming.

Ingenious Filmmaking and Cinematic Travelogue

The creative team for Influencers appear equally ingenious in locating beautiful places to film, though they were presumably more legitimate in their methods. Most of the film appears to be shot on location, providing it an authentic gravity that lingers even as many scenes involve a handful of actors of people looking at computer or phone screens.

It’s the same principle that made the James Bond movies appear so persistently lavish over the years: Indeed, explosive action and visual effects can show off a big budget, however just providing a travelogue of sorts for the audience also feels inherently cinematic. It’s also particularly appropriate for a narrative so rooted in the simultaneous surface-level allure and try-hard grind involved in producing jealousy-worthy online content.

All of the characters in Bali, like those who were in Thailand in the original, appear to enjoy entry to unbelievably stylish contemporary villas; films exist about lifeguards that don’t show off this much overhead swimming-pool footage. The characters must believably occupy these lush, far-flung locations to emphasize the uneasy irony of how frequently everyone — even the woman wreaking vengeance on the influencers’ narcissistic falseness — nevertheless devotes much time in the glow of their screens.

Nuanced Portrayals and Tech-Savvy Tension

At the same time, Harder hasn’t authored a rant against the emptiness of the influencer industry. While it is gratifying to see CW manipulate different internet celebrities, and a sense reminiscent of Hitchcock of identification lets us to hope she doesn’t get caught, the filmmaker is relatively sympathetic to the key influencer figures. Previously, he tapped into the isolation Madison felt during ostensibly dream getaways. In this film, Harder seems to trust that just observing Jacob at work will make it clear that he’s peddling snake-oil masculinity to other gullible men; he avoids caricaturing the character further. He even grants Jacob a measure of dignity through depicting his genuine loyalty to his girlfriend; he is two-faced, yet Ariana is a collaborator in his double standards, not a victim by it.

The flip side of Harder’s even-keeled presentation is that it can sometimes appear that he is acknowledging elements of contemporary digital culture without deeply exploring them further. This is particularly evident regarding how he introduces artificial intelligence into the story, a fascinating turn which misses the psychological edge it should have. The retitled sequel of Influencers could offer devotees of the original expectations of an Aliens-style ante-upping, and the movie does eventually provide exactly that, with a suitably wild final act. But before that, it resembles more a sleek Alfred Hitchcock movie than a frenzied, tech-addled Brian De Palma thriller. Influencers’ extensive use of actual places might also be what keeps it from seeming like pure nightmare fuel. Our society might be saturated with always-online creators, digital deception, and self-serving tourism, but reality itself is still here, for now.