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“The entire situation smells of a cheap made-for-TV,” states a cynical commentator midway through the chilling follow-up Influencers. In the moment, he’s being manipulatively dismissive of a guest with an bizarre tale he once claimed he believed. Yet his assessment of the events in the movie isn't inaccurate. Superficially, a pair of films on demand chronicling a young woman who worms her way into the lives of online influencers and then murders them seems like a modern-day version of a lurid but cable-ready weekly TV movie. The wild thing about Influencers remains just how superior it proves to be than plenty of the competition, regardless of where you watch it. It’s the kind of thriller capable of giving other movies a bad case of FOMO.

Revisiting the Original and Setting the Stage

2022’s Influencer tracks the mysterious CW (Cassandra Naud) as she methodically selects traveling alone social media targets, entices them to their doom, and covers up those deaths (at least temporarily) by seizing control of their socials. The film leaves off (spoiler ahead) with CW stranded on a deserted island off the coast of Thailand, following her latest target, Madison (Emily Tennant), turns the tables on her.

This lends the 2025 Influencers a degree of ambiguity, as returning filmmaker Kurtis David Harder resumes with the character CW happily living alongside her partner Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. On a journey to celebrate the couple’s first anniversary, UK-based influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) catches CW’s eye and anger.

CW remarks to Diane that a person ought to attempt leaving a device-obsessed online personality in a place with no technology and see if they can survive. Is this a backstory prequel? Was CW radicalized after witnessing the preferential treatment given to one fame-seeker?

Evolving Viewpoints and Global Pursuits

The narrative viewpoint shifts several more times, ultimately revealing those early scenes’ place in the timeline. The story revisits Madison, who has been exonerated for carrying out CW’s crimes, yet still encounters suspicion over her version of what happened, which includes the murder 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 duo alongside Ariana (Veronica Long), though his preferred medium involves masculine-focused livestreams, rather than the curated images that normally capture CW's interest.

Naud remains immensely captivating in her role, a role that appears particularly custom-fit to her strengths. (She also designed CW's eye-catching wardrobe.) Although the follow-up's focus leans heavily into CW — the first film seemed more balanced between the two women — it still functions as a story of dueling amateur detectives, with both women employ fake accounts, social media surveillance, and an apparently unlimited travel budget to pursue and/or escape one another. Of course, maybe the unlimited budget aren't needed. Influencers have a knack for getting to explore luxurious locales without paying much, a skill that CW echoes with her more overt scheming.

Resourceful Production and Cinematic Travelogue

The creative team for Influencers appear equally resourceful in locating stunning locations to visit, although they were likely more legitimate in their methods. Most of the movie seems to be shot on location, providing it an authentic gravity that lingers even when numerous sequences consist of a handful of actors of people looking at computer or phone screens.

It’s the same principle that made the Bond franchise appear so persistently lavish for decades: Yes, explosive action and special effects can show off a big budget, however 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 surface-level allure and try-hard grind of creating jealousy-worthy online content.

Every character in Bali, like those who were in Thailand in the original, appear to enjoy access to impossibly chic contemporary villas; there are movies about lifeguards which don't feature as much overhead swimming-pool footage. The characters have to convincingly occupy these luxurious, remote places to emphasize the uncomfortable paradox of how often everyone — even the woman wreaking vengeance on the influencers’ self-centered phoniness — nonetheless spends plenty of time under the light of their devices.

Nuanced Portrayals and Digital-Age Suspense

At the same time, the director has not crafted a rant targeting the emptiness of online fame. Though it is gratifying to see CW manipulate various online personalities, and a Hitchcockian sense of alignment allows us to hope she evades capture, Harder is somewhat understanding of the key influencer figures. Previously, he tapped into the loneliness Madison experienced while on supposedly envy-worthy vacations. Here, Harder seems to trust that just observing Jacob at work will reveal that he’s peddling snake-oil masculinity to other doofuses; he resists caricaturing the character further. He even gives Jacob a measure of dignity by showing his true devotion to his partner; he’s a hypocrite, yet Ariana is a collaborator in his hypocrisy, not a victim by it.

The other side of Harder’s even-keeled presentation means it can sometimes appear that he’s nodding at bits of modern online life without deeply exploring them. This is particularly evident of the way he introduces artificial intelligence into the story, a fascinating turn which misses the psychological edge it deserves. The pluralized title for the film could offer fans of the first movie hope for a larger-scale escalation, and the film ultimately delivers that, with a suitably wild final act. But before that, it’s more like a polished Alfred Hitchcock movie than a wild-eyed, technology-obsessed De Palma-style shocker. Influencers’ heavy use of real-world locations might also be what keeps it from coming across like pure nightmare fuel. The world might be saturated with content-churning influencers, online fraud, and exploitative travel, but the world itself remains present, for now.