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“The entire situation smells of a bad TV movie,” remarks an opportunistic commentator during the chilling follow-up Influencers. At that point, his tone is dismissive in a calculated way of a guest with an outlandish story he once said he trusted. But his description of what’s happening in the movie isn't inaccurate. On its face, a pair of films on demand about a young woman who worms her way into the worlds of online influencers and then murders them seems like a modern-day version of a lurid yet cable-ready weekly TV movie. The surprising aspect regarding Influencers is how much better it proves to be compared to much of its competition, irrespective of where you watch it. It is precisely the suspense film capable of giving its peers a bad case of FOMO.

Recapping the First Film and Establishing the Scene

2022’s Influencer tracks the enigmatic CW (Cassandra Naud) while she methodically selects solo-traveling social media targets, lures them to their deaths, and conceals those deaths (for a time) by taking control of their online accounts. The movie concludes (spoiler ahead) with CW marooned on an uninhabited 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 mystery, as returning filmmaker the director resumes with the character CW happily living alongside her partner Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. On a journey to celebrate their first anniversary, UK-based influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) catches CW's attention and anger.

CW remarks to her partner that someone ought to attempt leaving a phone-addicted influencer somewhere with no technology and see if they can survive. Are we witnessing a backstory prequel? Was CW radicalized by seeing the preferential treatment given to one fame-seeker?

Shifting Perspectives and Global Pursuits

The narrative viewpoint shifts several more times, eventually clarifying those introductory moments' place in the timeline. The story revisits Madison, now exonerated for committing CW’s crimes, yet still encounters suspicion regarding her version of what happened, including the murder of her boyfriend. The film also follows Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), based in Bali and trying to juice his career as half of a conservative-influencer duo with Ariana (Veronica Long), though his chosen platform is bro-heavy streams, rather than the curated images that typically attract CW’s attention.

The actor continues to be terrifically magnetic in her role, which seems especially custom-fit for her talents. (She even created CW's striking outfits.) While the sequel’s screentime balance tips heavily toward CW — the first film felt more equally divided between the two women — it still works as a tale of rival amateur detectives, with both women employ fabricated profiles, social media surveillance, and an apparently unlimited travel budget to chase or evade one another. Of course, maybe the vast resources aren't needed. Online personalities possess a talent for getting to explore luxurious locales without paying much, a skill which CW mirrors through her more blatant scamming.

Ingenious Filmmaking and Cinematic Travelogue

The creative team for Influencers seem similarly ingenious in locating beautiful places to film, though they were likely more legitimate about it. Most of the movie appears to be shot on location, providing it a real-world weight that lingers even as many scenes involve a handful of actors of people staring at digital devices.

It’s the same principle which allowed the Bond franchise appear so consistently opulent for decades: Yes, big action and visual effects can display large spending, however simply offering a kind of visual tour to viewers also seems deeply filmic. It’s also especially fitting 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, like those staying in Thailand in the original, seem to have access to unbelievably stylish contemporary villas; there are movies concerning beach rescuers that don’t show off as much aerial pool video. The characters must believably inhabit these lush, remote places to emphasize the uneasy irony of how frequently everyone — including the woman exacting revenge on the influencers’ narcissistic falseness — nevertheless spends plenty of time in the glow of their screens.

Balanced Depictions and Digital-Age Suspense

At the same time, the director has not crafted a screed targeting the vacuousness of online fame. While it can be gratifying to see CW manipulate different internet celebrities, and a sense reminiscent of Hitchcock of alignment allows us to hope she doesn’t get caught, the filmmaker is somewhat understanding of the major influencer characters. Previously, he tapped into the loneliness Madison experienced during ostensibly envy-worthy vacations. Here, Harder seems to trust that merely watching Jacob at work will make it clear that he’s peddling snake-oil masculinity to other doofuses; he resists turning into a caricature the character further. He even grants Jacob a measure of dignity through depicting his true devotion to his girlfriend; he’s a hypocrite, yet Ariana is a collaborator in his double standards, not a victim of it.

The other side of Harder’s even-keeled presentation is that it may occasionally seem as if he is acknowledging bits of contemporary digital culture without deeply exploring them further. This is particularly evident of the way he brings AI into the story, a fascinating turn which misses the psychological edge it deserves. The retitled sequel of Influencers could offer devotees of the original hope for an Aliens-style ante-upping, and the film does eventually provide that, with an appropriately chaotic climax. However, initially, it’s more like a sleek Alfred Hitchcock movie than a frenzied, tech-addled De Palma-style shocker. Influencers’ heavy use of actual places might also be what keeps it from seeming like pure nightmare fuel. The world might be saturated with always-online creators, digital deception, and self-serving tourism, but the world itself remains present, at least for now.