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“This whole affair stinks of a bad made-for-TV,” remarks an opportunistic podcaster midway through the chilling follow-up Influencers. At that point, his tone is dismissive in a calculated way of a guest whose bizarre tale he previously said he trusted. But his assessment of what’s happening in the movie isn’t wrong. Superficially, two streaming movies about a woman who insinuates herself into the lives of online influencers and then murders them seems like a modern-day version of a tawdry yet cable-ready Movie of the Week. The surprising aspect regarding Influencers is how much better it proves to be than plenty of its competition, regardless of screen size. It’s the kind of suspense film that should give its peers a serious bout of FOMO.

Revisiting the First Film and Establishing the Scene

The 2022 film Influencer tracks the mysterious CW (Cassandra Naud) while she quietly chooses solo-traveling influencer targets, lures them to their doom, and conceals those deaths (for a time) by seizing control of their online accounts. The movie leaves off (spoiler ahead) with CW stranded on a deserted island near 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, when returning filmmaker Kurtis David Harder picks up with the character CW happily living with her girlfriend Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. On a journey marking the couple’s first anniversary, UK-based influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) catches CW’s eye and anger.

CW comments to her partner that someone should try stranding a phone-addicted online personality somewhere with no technology to see whether they can survive. Are we witnessing a backstory prequel? Did CW become extremist by seeing the preferential treatment given to one clout-chaser?

Evolving Viewpoints and Global Pursuits

The narrative viewpoint shifts several more times, eventually clarifying those early scenes’ place in the timeline. The story revisits Madison, who has been exonerated for committing CW’s crimes, but still faces suspicion regarding her recounting of the events, including the killing of Madison’s boyfriend. We also follow Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), living in Bali attempting to juice his career as part of a conservative-influencer duo alongside Ariana (Veronica Long), although his chosen platform is bro-heavy streams, as opposed to the curated images that normally capture CW's interest.

Naud remains immensely captivating in her role, a role that appears particularly custom-fit 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 rival investigators, as Madison and CW both use fake accounts, social media surveillance, and a seemingly unlimited travel budget to pursue and/or escape one another. Of course, perhaps the vast resources aren't needed. Influencers have a talent for gaining access to posh places without paying much, a skill that CW echoes through her more blatant scamming.

Ingenious Filmmaking and Visual Wanderlust

The filmmakers behind Influencers seem similarly ingenious about finding stunning locations to visit, though they were presumably more legitimate about it. Most of the movie seems to be shot on location, giving it an authentic gravity that lingers even when many scenes consist of a handful of actors of people looking at digital devices.

It’s the same principle which allowed the James Bond movies look so persistently lavish for decades: Indeed, big action and special effects can display large spending, but just providing a kind of visual tour to viewers also feels deeply filmic. This is particularly appropriate for a story so rooted in the coexisting superficial glamour and try-hard grind involved in producing jealousy-worthy digital content.

Every character visiting Bali, similar to those who were in Thailand in the first film, seem to have access to impossibly chic contemporary villas; there are movies concerning beach rescuers that don’t show off this much overhead swimming-pool video. The characters have to convincingly occupy these luxurious, remote places to highlight the uneasy irony of how frequently each person — even the woman wreaking vengeance on the influencers’ narcissistic falseness — nevertheless spends plenty of time in the glow of their screens.

Nuanced Portrayals and Digital-Age Suspense

At the same time, Harder hasn’t authored a screed targeting the emptiness of the influencer industry. While it is satisfying to watch CW exploit various online personalities, and a sense reminiscent of Hitchcock of alignment lets us to wish she evades capture, the filmmaker is relatively sympathetic to the key influencer figures. In the first movie, he keyed into the loneliness Madison felt while on supposedly envy-worthy vacations. Here, the director appears confident that merely watching Jacob in action will make it clear that he is selling false masculinity to other gullible men; he resists turning into a caricature the character further. He even gives Jacob a degree of respect through depicting his genuine loyalty to his partner; he is two-faced, yet Ariana is a collaborator in his hypocrisy, not a victim of it.

The other side of Harder’s even-keeled presentation is that it may occasionally seem that he is acknowledging bits of modern online life without deeply exploring them. This is especially true regarding how he brings AI into the plot, a fascinating turn which misses the psychosexual kick it deserves. The retitled sequel of Influencers could offer fans of the first movie expectations of an Aliens-style ante-upping, and the movie does eventually provide that, with a suitably wild final act. However, initially, it resembles more a sleek Hitchcock thriller than an frenzied, tech-addled De Palma-style shocker. Influencers’ heavy use of actual places may also be what prevents it from coming across like pure nightmare fuel. The world might be saturated with always-online creators, digital deception, and self-serving tourism, but the world itself is still here, at least for now.