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“The entire situation reeks 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 with an bizarre tale he previously claimed he believed. But his assessment of the events in the movie isn't inaccurate. On its face, two streaming movies about a woman who insinuates herself into the worlds of online influencers before killing them seems like the 21st-century equivalent of a tawdry but cable-ready weekly TV movie. The surprising aspect about Influencers is just how superior it proves to be compared to much of its competition, regardless of where you watch it. It’s the kind of suspense film capable of giving other movies a serious bout of FOMO.

Revisiting the Original and Setting the Stage

The 2022 film Influencer follows the enigmatic CW (Cassandra Naud) while she quietly chooses traveling alone social media targets, lures them to their doom, and conceals those murders (for a time) by taking control of their socials. The film leaves off (spoiler ahead) with CW marooned on a deserted island near the coast of Thailand, after her most recent mark, Madison (Emily Tennant), reverses their roles on her.

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

CW comments to her partner that someone should try stranding a device-obsessed online personality in a place without any devices to see whether they can survive. Are we witnessing an origin-story prequel? Was CW radicalized by seeing the special treatment afforded a single fame-seeker?

Shifting Perspectives and Global Pursuits

The narrative viewpoint changes multiple times, eventually clarifying those introductory moments' place in the timeline. The story revisits Madison, who has been exonerated for committing CW’s crimes, yet still encounters doubt regarding her version of what happened, including the murder 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), although his preferred medium involves masculine-focused livestreams, rather than the curated images that normally attract CW's interest.

Naud remains terrifically magnetic in her role, a role that appears particularly custom-fit to her strengths. (She even created CW's striking outfits.) While the sequel’s screentime balance tips heavily toward CW — the first film seemed more balanced between the two women — it still functions as a story of rival investigators, as Madison and CW employ fake accounts, social media surveillance, and an apparently limitless travel fund to chase or evade one another. Then again, maybe the vast resources isn’t necessary. Influencers have a talent for getting to explore luxurious locales at little cost, a skill that CW echoes through her more blatant scheming.

Ingenious Filmmaking and Cinematic Travelogue

The creative team for Influencers appear equally ingenious in locating beautiful places to film, though they were presumably less nefarious in their methods. The vast majority of the movie seems to be filmed in real places, providing it an authentic gravity that remains even when numerous sequences consist of a handful of actors of characters staring at computer or phone screens.

It follows the same logic that made the James Bond movies look so persistently lavish for decades: Indeed, big action and special effects can show off large spending, but simply offering a kind of visual tour to viewers also feels deeply filmic. This is especially fitting for a story so dependent on the coexisting surface-level allure and try-hard grind of creating jealousy-worthy digital content.

Every character in Bali, similar to those who were in Thailand in the first film, appear to enjoy entry to unbelievably stylish contemporary villas; films exist about lifeguards that don’t show off as much aerial pool footage. The characters have to convincingly occupy these luxurious, far-flung locations to highlight the uneasy irony of how often each person — even the woman exacting revenge on the influencers’ narcissistic falseness — nonetheless spends plenty of time under the light of their devices.

Balanced Depictions and Tech-Savvy Tension

At the same time, the director has not crafted a rant against the emptiness of online fame. While it is gratifying to see CW manipulate various online personalities, and a Hitchcockian sense of identification allows us to wish she doesn’t get caught, the filmmaker is somewhat understanding of the key influencer figures. Previously, he tapped into the loneliness Madison felt during supposedly envy-worthy vacations. Here, the director appears confident that just observing Jacob at work will reveal that he’s peddling false masculinity to other doofuses; he avoids caricaturing the character further. He even gives Jacob a measure of dignity by showing his genuine loyalty to his girlfriend; he is two-faced, but Ariana is a collaborator in his double standards, not someone exploited by it.

The other side of Harder’s even-keeled presentation means it can sometimes appear that he’s nodding at bits of modern online life without investigating them further. This is especially true of the way he introduces artificial intelligence into the story, an intriguing development which misses the psychological edge it should have. The pluralized title of Influencers might give devotees of the original hope for an Aliens-style escalation, and the film does eventually provide exactly that, with a suitably chaotic climax. However, initially, 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 prevents it from seeming like utter horror. The world may be overrun with content-churning influencers, online fraud, and exploitative travel, but the world itself is still here, for now.