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“Everything about this smells of a cheap TV movie,” states a cynical commentator during the chilling follow-up Influencers. At that point, his tone is dismissive in a calculated way of a guest whose bizarre tale he previously claimed he believed. But his assessment of the events in the movie isn’t wrong. On its face, two streaming movies chronicling a young woman who insinuates herself into the worlds of social media stars and then murders them seems like the 21st-century equivalent of a lurid yet cable-ready Movie of the Week. The wild thing regarding Influencers is just how superior it is than plenty of its competition, irrespective of where you watch it. It’s the kind of suspense film capable of giving its peers a bad case of FOMO.

Recapping the First Film and Establishing the Scene

2022’s Influencer follows the enigmatic CW (Cassandra Naud) as she quietly chooses traveling alone social media targets, lures them to their doom, and covers up those deaths (for a time) by seizing 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), reverses their roles on her.

This provides the 2025 Influencers a degree of mystery, as returning writer-director the director resumes with CW contentedly residing alongside her partner Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. During a trip to celebrate the couple’s one-year anniversary, UK-based influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) catches CW’s eye and ire.

CW comments to Diane that a person ought to attempt stranding a device-obsessed online personality somewhere without any devices to see if they can survive. Is this an origin-story prequel? Was CW radicalized by seeing the special treatment given to one clout-chaser?

Shifting Perspectives and International Chases

The story’s perspective shifts several more times, eventually clarifying those early scenes’ chronological position. The story revisits Madison, who has been exonerated for committing CW's offenses, but still faces doubt regarding her recounting of the events, which includes the killing of her boyfriend. The film also follows Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), living in Bali attempting to boost his profile as part of a conservative-influencer duo alongside Ariana (Veronica Long), though his preferred medium is bro-heavy streams, rather than the curated images that normally attract CW’s attention.

The actor continues to be immensely captivating in her role, which seems especially tailor-made for her talents. (She even created CW's striking outfits.) While the sequel’s screentime balance tips heavily toward CW — the original seemed more balanced between the two women — it still functions as a tale of rival amateur detectives, with both women employ fabricated profiles, social media surveillance, and an apparently unlimited travel budget to chase and/or escape each other. Then again, perhaps the unlimited budget aren't needed. Influencers have a knack for getting to explore posh places at little cost, a skill which CW mirrors with her more overt scamming.

Ingenious Filmmaking and Cinematic Travelogue

The filmmakers behind Influencers appear equally resourceful about finding stunning locations to visit, although they were presumably less nefarious about it. The vast majority of the film appears to be shot on location, providing it a real-world weight that remains even when numerous sequences consist of a relatively small cast of characters staring at digital devices.

It’s the same principle which allowed the Bond franchise appear so persistently lavish for decades: Yes, big action and special effects can show off a big budget, however just providing a kind of visual tour to viewers also seems inherently cinematic. This is especially fitting for a narrative so dependent on the coexisting surface-level allure and desperate hustle of creating envy-inducing digital content.

All of the characters visiting Bali, like those staying in Thailand in the original, appear to enjoy entry to impossibly chic modern bungalows; there are movies concerning beach rescuers that don’t show off as much overhead swimming-pool footage. The characters have to convincingly occupy these luxurious, far-flung locations to emphasize the uneasy irony of how frequently each person — even the woman wreaking vengeance on the influencers’ narcissistic falseness — nonetheless spends plenty of time under the light of their devices.

Balanced Depictions and Digital-Age Suspense

Simultaneously, Harder hasn’t authored a screed targeting the vacuousness of the influencer industry. Though it is satisfying to see CW manipulate different internet celebrities, and a Hitchcockian sense of identification lets us to wish she doesn’t get caught, the filmmaker is somewhat sympathetic to the major influencer characters. In the first movie, he tapped into the isolation Madison felt during supposedly envy-worthy vacations. Here, Harder seems to trust that just observing Jacob in action will make it clear that he is selling false masculinity to other gullible men; he resists caricaturing the character. He even grants Jacob a measure of dignity by showing his true devotion to his girlfriend; he is two-faced, yet Ariana is a partner in his double standards, not someone exploited of it.

The flip side of this balanced approach means it can sometimes appear as if he’s nodding at bits of contemporary digital culture without deeply exploring them further. This is particularly evident of the way he brings AI into the story, an intriguing development which misses the psychosexual kick it should have. The retitled sequel for the film might give fans of the first movie hope for a larger-scale ante-upping, and the movie does eventually provide that, with a suitably chaotic climax. However, initially, it’s more like a polished Hitchcock thriller than an wild-eyed, tech-addled Brian De Palma thriller. Influencers’ extensive use of actual places might also be what keeps it from seeming like pure nightmare fuel. The world may be overrun with always-online creators, digital deception, and exploitative travel, but the world itself remains present, at least for now.