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“The entire situation stinks of a cheap made-for-TV,” 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 outlandish story he previously claimed he believed. Yet his description of what’s happening in the movie isn't inaccurate. Superficially, two films on demand chronicling a woman who insinuates herself into the lives of online influencers before killing them seems like a modern-day version of a lurid yet network-approved weekly TV movie. The surprising aspect about Influencers remains how much better it is than plenty of the competition, irrespective of screen size. 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 tracks the mysterious CW (Cassandra Naud) while she quietly chooses solo-traveling influencer targets, entices them to their deaths, and conceals those murders (at least temporarily) by taking control of their online accounts. The movie leaves off (spoiler ahead) with CW stranded on an uninhabited island near the coast of Thailand, following her most recent mark, Madison (Emily Tennant), turns the tables against her.

This provides the 2025 Influencers a degree of ambiguity, when returning writer-director the director resumes with CW happily living with her girlfriend Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. On a journey marking the couple’s first anniversary, British influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) draws CW's attention and ire.

CW remarks to her partner that a person should try stranding a device-obsessed influencer in a place without any devices and see whether they can survive. Are we witnessing a backstory prequel? Did CW become extremist after witnessing the special treatment afforded a single fame-seeker?

Evolving Viewpoints and Global Pursuits

The narrative viewpoint shifts several more times, ultimately revealing those introductory moments' chronological position. The story revisits Madison, now cleared of committing CW's offenses, yet still encounters doubt over her recounting of what happened, including the killing of Madison’s boyfriend. The film also follows Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), based in Bali and trying to juice his career as part of a right-wing-influencer power couple alongside Ariana (Veronica Long), though his chosen platform involves masculine-focused livestreams, rather than the curated images that typically attract CW’s attention.

The actor continues to be immensely captivating in her role, a role that appears especially custom-fit for her talents. (She also designed CW's striking outfits.) While 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, Insta-stalking, and a seemingly limitless travel fund to pursue and/or escape one another. Of course, perhaps the unlimited budget aren't needed. Influencers have a knack for gaining access to posh places without paying much, an ability which CW mirrors with her more overt scheming.

Ingenious Filmmaking and Cinematic Travelogue

The creative team for Influencers appear equally ingenious in locating beautiful places to film, although they were likely less nefarious about it. Most of the film appears to be filmed in real places, giving it an authentic gravity that lingers even when numerous sequences involve a handful of actors of characters looking at computer or phone screens.

It follows the same logic that made the Bond franchise look so persistently lavish over the years: Yes, explosive action and special effects can show off a big budget, however just providing a travelogue of sorts to viewers also feels deeply filmic. This is especially fitting for a narrative so rooted in the simultaneous surface-level allure and try-hard grind involved in producing envy-inducing online content.

Every character visiting Bali, like those staying in Thailand in the first film, seem to have entry to unbelievably stylish contemporary villas; films exist about lifeguards that don’t show off as much overhead swimming-pool video. These individuals have to convincingly 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 — nonetheless spends plenty of time under the light of their screens.

Nuanced Portrayals and Digital-Age Suspense

Simultaneously, the director has not crafted a rant targeting the vacuousness of the influencer industry. While it can be 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 somewhat understanding of the key influencer figures. In the first movie, he keyed into the loneliness Madison felt while on supposedly envy-worthy vacations. In this film, Harder seems to trust that just observing Jacob at work will reveal that he’s peddling false masculinity to other gullible men; he resists turning into a caricature the character. He even grants Jacob a measure of dignity through depicting his true devotion to his girlfriend; he is two-faced, but Ariana is a collaborator in his double standards, not a victim by it.

The other side of this balanced approach is that it may occasionally seem that he’s nodding at bits of modern online life without investigating them. This is particularly evident regarding how he introduces artificial intelligence into the story, a fascinating turn that lacks the psychological edge it should have. The retitled sequel of Influencers could offer fans of the first movie expectations of a larger-scale ante-upping, and the film does eventually provide that, with an appropriately chaotic climax. But before that, it resembles more a polished Alfred Hitchcock movie than an wild-eyed, tech-addled Brian De Palma thriller. Influencers’ heavy use of actual places may also be what prevents it from seeming like utter horror. Our society might be saturated with content-churning influencers, online fraud, and self-serving tourism, but reality itself is still here, at least for now.