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“Everything about this stinks of a bad made-for-TV,” states a cynical commentator midway through the chilling follow-up Influencers. At that point, his tone is dismissive in a calculated way of a guest whose outlandish story he once claimed he believed. Yet his description of the events in the movie isn't inaccurate. Superficially, two films on demand 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 wild thing regarding Influencers is how much better it proves to be than plenty of its competition, regardless of where you watch it. It is precisely the suspense film capable of giving its peers a bad case of FOMO.

Revisiting the Original and Setting the Stage

2022’s Influencer follows the mysterious CW (Cassandra Naud) as she methodically selects solo-traveling social media targets, lures them to their doom, and covers up those deaths (for a time) by seizing control of their online accounts. The movie leaves off (spoiler ahead) with CW marooned on a deserted island off the coast of Thailand, after her most recent mark, Madison (Emily Tennant), reverses their roles on her.

This lends the 2025 Influencers a degree of mystery, as returning writer-director the director picks up with the character CW happily living with her girlfriend 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 attention and ire.

CW comments to Diane that someone ought to attempt leaving a phone-addicted influencer in a place with no technology to see if they can make it. Is this an origin-story prequel? Did CW become extremist by seeing the preferential treatment given to one fame-seeker?

Evolving Viewpoints and Global Pursuits

The story’s perspective shifts several more times, ultimately revealing those early scenes’ chronological position. The story revisits Madison, now cleared of carrying out CW’s crimes, yet still encounters suspicion over her recounting of the events, which includes the killing of her boyfriend. We also follow Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), living in Bali and trying to juice his career as half of a conservative-influencer duo with Ariana (Veronica Long), although his preferred medium involves masculine-focused livestreams, rather than the Instagram photos that typically capture CW's interest.

Naud remains terrifically magnetic in the part, a role that appears especially tailor-made to her strengths. (She even created CW's eye-catching wardrobe.) While the follow-up's screentime balance tips heavily toward CW — the original seemed more balanced between her and Madison — it still functions as a story of dueling investigators, with both women employ fake accounts, social media surveillance, and an apparently limitless travel fund to chase and/or escape one another. Then again, perhaps the vast resources isn’t necessary. Online personalities possess a knack for getting to explore luxurious locales without paying much, a skill that CW echoes through her more blatant scamming.

Resourceful Production and Visual Wanderlust

The filmmakers behind Influencers seem similarly resourceful about finding stunning locations to film, although they were likely more legitimate in their methods. The vast majority of the movie seems to be filmed in real places, giving it an authentic gravity that remains even as many scenes consist of a relatively small cast of characters staring at computer or phone screens.

It follows the same logic that made the James Bond movies appear so persistently lavish over the years: 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 involved in producing envy-inducing digital content.

Every character in Bali, like those staying in Thailand in the first film, seem to have entry to impossibly chic contemporary villas; films exist about lifeguards that don’t show off this much overhead swimming-pool footage. These individuals must believably occupy these lush, remote places to emphasize the uncomfortable paradox of how often everyone — even the woman exacting revenge on the influencers’ self-centered phoniness — nevertheless devotes much time in the glow of their devices.

Balanced Depictions and Tech-Savvy Tension

At the same time, Harder hasn’t authored a rant targeting the emptiness of online fame. While it is gratifying to see CW exploit various online personalities, and a Hitchcockian sense of identification allows us to wish she doesn’t get caught, Harder is relatively sympathetic to the major influencer characters. In the first movie, he keyed into the isolation Madison experienced while on ostensibly envy-worthy vacations. Here, Harder seems to trust that just observing Jacob in action will reveal that he is selling snake-oil masculinity to other gullible men; he resists turning into a caricature the character further. 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 hypocrisy, not a victim of 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 further. This is particularly evident of the way he introduces artificial intelligence into the plot, an intriguing development which misses the psychosexual kick it deserves. The retitled sequel of Influencers might give devotees of the original hope for an Aliens-style escalation, and the film does eventually provide that, with a suitably chaotic climax. However, initially, it’s more like a sleek Hitchcock thriller than a wild-eyed, tech-addled De Palma-style shocker. Influencers’ heavy use of actual places may also be what prevents it from coming across like utter horror. The world may be overrun with always-online creators, online fraud, and exploitative travel, but the world itself remains present, for now.