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“This whole affair smells like a cheap made-for-TV,” observes a cynical commentator midway through the chilling follow-up Influencers. In the moment, his tone is dismissive in a calculated way toward an interviewee with an bizarre tale he once claimed he believed. Yet his description of the events on screen isn't inaccurate. On its face, a pair of streaming movies about a young woman who worms her way into the worlds of online influencers and then murders them feels like the 21st-century equivalent of a tawdry yet cable-ready weekly TV movie. The surprising aspect about Influencers remains how much better it proves to be than plenty of its competition, regardless of screen size. It’s the kind of thriller capable of giving other movies a serious bout of FOMO.

Revisiting the Original and Setting the Stage

2022’s Influencer tracks the mysterious CW (Cassandra Naud) as she methodically selects solo-traveling influencer targets, lures them to their doom, and covers up those murders (at least temporarily) by seizing control of their online accounts. The movie concludes (spoiler ahead) with CW marooned on a deserted island off the coast of Thailand, following her latest target, Madison (Emily Tennant), turns the tables against her.

This provides the 2025 Influencers some early ambiguity, as returning filmmaker Kurtis David Harder picks up with CW contentedly residing alongside her partner Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. On a journey to celebrate the couple’s first anniversary, British influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) draws CW's attention and ire.

CW comments to her partner that someone should try stranding a device-obsessed influencer in a place with no technology to see whether they can make it. Are we witnessing an origin-story prequel? Was CW radicalized by seeing the special treatment afforded a single clout-chaser?

Evolving Viewpoints and Global Pursuits

The story’s perspective changes multiple times, ultimately revealing those introductory moments' chronological position. The story revisits Madison, who has been exonerated for carrying out CW's offenses, but still faces suspicion over her version of the events, including the killing of her boyfriend. We also follow Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), based in Bali attempting to boost his profile as part of a conservative-influencer power couple with Ariana (Veronica Long), though his chosen platform is bro-heavy streams, rather than the curated images that typically capture CW’s attention.

Naud remains terrifically magnetic in the part, a role that appears especially custom-fit to her strengths. (She also designed CW's eye-catching outfits.) Although the sequel’s focus tips heavily toward CW — the first film felt more equally divided between the two women — it still works as a story of dueling amateur detectives, as Madison and CW employ fabricated profiles, Insta-stalking, and a seemingly limitless travel fund to chase and/or escape each other. Then again, perhaps the vast resources aren't needed. Online personalities possess a talent for getting to explore posh places without paying much, an ability which CW mirrors through her more blatant scheming.

Ingenious Filmmaking and Cinematic Travelogue

The creative team for Influencers appear equally ingenious in locating beautiful places to visit, although they were presumably less nefarious about it. The vast majority of the film seems to be shot on location, providing it an authentic gravity that lingers even as numerous sequences involve a handful of actors of people looking at computer or phone screens.

It follows the same logic which allowed the James Bond movies appear so persistently lavish for decades: Yes, big action and visual effects can display large spending, but just providing a kind of visual tour to viewers also feels deeply filmic. It’s also particularly appropriate for a story so dependent on the simultaneous superficial glamour and desperate hustle involved in producing envy-inducing online content.

All of the characters visiting Bali, similar to those who were in Thailand in the first film, seem to have entry to unbelievably stylish contemporary villas; there are movies concerning beach rescuers which don't feature as much aerial pool video. These individuals must believably inhabit these lush, far-flung locations to emphasize the uneasy irony of how frequently each person — even the woman exacting revenge on the influencers’ narcissistic falseness — nevertheless devotes much time under the light of their devices.

Nuanced Portrayals and Tech-Savvy Tension

At the same time, Harder hasn’t authored a rant against the vacuousness of online fame. While it can be gratifying to see CW exploit various online personalities, and a sense reminiscent of Hitchcock of alignment allows us to hope she evades capture, Harder is relatively sympathetic to the major influencer characters. In the first movie, he keyed into the loneliness Madison experienced during supposedly envy-worthy vacations. In this film, Harder seems to trust that just observing Jacob in action will reveal that he’s peddling false masculinity to other gullible men; he avoids caricaturing the character. He even grants Jacob a degree of respect by showing his genuine loyalty to his partner; he’s a hypocrite, but Ariana is a collaborator in his hypocrisy, not a victim by 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 investigating them. This is especially true of the way he brings AI into the story, an intriguing development which misses the psychological edge it should have. The pluralized title for the film might give fans of the first movie hope for an Aliens-style escalation, and the movie does eventually provide that, with a suitably chaotic climax. However, initially, it resembles more a polished Alfred Hitchcock movie than an wild-eyed, tech-addled De Palma-style shocker. Influencers’ extensive use of real-world locations may also be what keeps it from coming across like utter horror. Our society might be saturated with always-online creators, digital deception, and self-serving tourism, but the world itself remains present, at least for now.