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“The entire situation reeks like a bad made-for-TV,” observes a cynical podcaster midway through the chilling follow-up Influencers. At that point, he’s being manipulatively dismissive of a guest whose outlandish story he once said he trusted. Yet his description of the events in the movie isn’t wrong. Superficially, a pair of streaming movies chronicling a woman who insinuates herself into the worlds of online influencers before killing them seems like the 21st-century equivalent of a tawdry yet cable-ready Movie of the Week. The wild thing regarding Influencers is just how superior it proves to be than plenty of its competition, regardless of screen size. It’s the kind of suspense film that should give other movies a bad case of FOMO.

Recapping the First Film and Setting the Stage

2022’s Influencer follows the mysterious CW (Cassandra Naud) while she quietly chooses solo-traveling influencer targets, entices them to their deaths, and covers up those murders (at least temporarily) by taking control of their online accounts. The movie concludes (spoiler ahead) with CW stranded on a deserted island off the coast of Thailand, after her latest target, Madison (Emily Tennant), turns the tables against her.

This provides the 2025 Influencers a degree of ambiguity, as returning writer-director the director picks up with the character CW happily living with her girlfriend Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. On a journey marking the couple’s one-year anniversary, British influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) catches CW’s eye and anger.

CW comments to Diane that someone should try leaving a phone-addicted online personality in a place with no technology and see if they can make it. Are we witnessing a backstory prequel? Did CW become extremist by seeing the special treatment afforded 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, who has been cleared of committing CW's offenses, yet still encounters doubt over her recounting of the events, which includes the killing of Madison’s boyfriend. The film also follows Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), based in Bali attempting to boost his profile as part of a conservative-influencer power couple with Ariana (Veronica Long), although his preferred medium involves masculine-focused livestreams, as opposed to the curated images that normally capture CW’s attention.

Naud remains immensely captivating in her role, which seems particularly tailor-made for her talents. (She even created CW's striking wardrobe.) Although the follow-up's focus tips heavily toward CW — the first film seemed more balanced between the two women — it still functions as a tale of dueling investigators, with both women both use fabricated profiles, social media surveillance, and an apparently limitless travel fund to pursue and/or escape each other. Then again, maybe the unlimited budget isn’t necessary. Influencers have a knack for gaining access to posh places at little cost, an ability that CW echoes through her more blatant scamming.

Ingenious Filmmaking and Cinematic Travelogue

The creative team for Influencers seem similarly resourceful about finding stunning locations to visit, although they were presumably less nefarious in their methods. The vast majority of the film appears to be filmed in real places, providing it a real-world weight that lingers even when numerous sequences involve a handful of actors of characters looking at digital devices.

It follows the same logic that made the Bond franchise look so consistently opulent over the years: Indeed, big action and special effects can display a big budget, however just providing a kind of visual tour for the audience also seems inherently cinematic. It’s also particularly appropriate for a narrative so rooted in the simultaneous surface-level allure and try-hard grind of creating envy-inducing online content.

Every character visiting Bali, similar to those staying in Thailand in the first film, seem to have entry to impossibly chic modern bungalows; films exist concerning beach rescuers that don’t show off as much overhead swimming-pool footage. These individuals must believably occupy these luxurious, remote places to emphasize the uneasy irony of how frequently each person — including 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

Simultaneously, the director has not crafted a screed against the emptiness of online fame. Though it is gratifying to watch CW manipulate different internet celebrities, and a Hitchcockian sense of identification allows us to hope she evades capture, the filmmaker is relatively sympathetic to the key influencer figures. Previously, he tapped into the loneliness Madison felt while on ostensibly envy-worthy vacations. In this film, the director appears confident that just observing Jacob at work will reveal that he’s peddling snake-oil masculinity to other gullible men; he avoids turning into a caricature the character further. He even gives Jacob a degree of respect by showing his true devotion to his girlfriend; he’s a hypocrite, 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 as if he’s nodding at elements of modern online life without investigating them further. This is especially true of the way he brings AI into the story, an intriguing development that lacks the psychological edge it should have. The pluralized title of Influencers could offer devotees of the original expectations of a larger-scale ante-upping, and the movie does eventually provide exactly that, with an appropriately chaotic climax. But before that, it resembles more a sleek Hitchcock thriller than an frenzied, tech-addled De Palma-style shocker. Influencers’ extensive use of actual places may also be what keeps it from coming across like utter horror. Our society may be overrun with always-online creators, digital deception, and self-serving tourism, but reality itself remains present, for now.