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“This whole affair stinks like a bad TV movie,” observes an opportunistic podcaster during the chilling follow-up Influencers. At that point, he’s being dismissive in a calculated way of a guest with an bizarre tale he once claimed he believed. Yet 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 insinuates herself into the lives of social media stars and then murders them feels like the 21st-century equivalent of a tawdry but cable-ready Movie of the Week. The surprising aspect about Influencers is just how superior it is compared to much of its competition, regardless of screen size. It is precisely the thriller capable of giving its peers a bad case of FOMO.

Recapping the First Film and Establishing the Scene

The 2022 film Influencer follows the mysterious CW (Cassandra Naud) as she methodically selects solo-traveling social media targets, entices them to their doom, and covers up those deaths (at least temporarily) by seizing control of their socials. The movie concludes (spoiler ahead) with CW marooned on a deserted island near the coast of Thailand, after her most recent mark, Madison (Emily Tennant), reverses their roles against her.

This lends the 2025 Influencers a degree of mystery, when returning filmmaker Kurtis David Harder resumes with CW happily living alongside her partner Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. During a trip to celebrate their first anniversary, British influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) draws CW's attention and anger.

CW remarks to her partner that a person ought to attempt stranding a phone-addicted online personality somewhere with no technology to see whether they can make it. Is this an origin-story prequel? Was CW radicalized after witnessing the preferential treatment given to a single clout-chaser?

Evolving Viewpoints and International Chases

The story’s perspective shifts several more times, eventually clarifying those early scenes’ place in the timeline. The story revisits Madison, now exonerated for committing CW’s crimes, yet still encounters suspicion over her version of what happened, including the killing of her boyfriend. We also follow Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), living in Bali and trying to juice his career as part of a right-wing-influencer power couple with Ariana (Veronica Long), although his chosen platform involves masculine-focused livestreams, rather than the curated images that normally capture CW’s attention.

The actor continues to be immensely captivating in the part, a role that appears particularly tailor-made to her strengths. (She also designed CW's eye-catching outfits.) While the follow-up's screentime balance tips heavily toward CW — the first film felt more equally divided between the two women — it still works as a story of dueling investigators, as Madison and CW both use fabricated profiles, social media surveillance, and an apparently unlimited travel budget to chase or evade one another. Of course, maybe the unlimited budget aren't needed. Online personalities possess a knack for gaining access to posh places at little cost, a skill that CW echoes with her more overt scamming.

Resourceful Production and Visual Wanderlust

The filmmakers behind Influencers seem similarly resourceful in locating beautiful places to visit, though they were likely more legitimate about it. The vast majority of the film appears to be shot on location, giving it a real-world weight that lingers even as many scenes involve a relatively small cast of characters staring at computer or phone screens.

It follows the same logic which allowed the James Bond movies appear so persistently lavish for decades: Yes, explosive action and visual effects can display a big budget, but simply offering a travelogue of sorts for the audience also feels inherently cinematic. It’s also especially fitting for a story so dependent on the coexisting surface-level allure and try-hard grind of creating envy-inducing online content.

Every character in 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 that don’t show off this much aerial pool video. The characters must believably occupy these luxurious, far-flung locations to highlight the uncomfortable paradox of how often everyone — even the woman wreaking vengeance on the influencers’ self-centered phoniness — nevertheless spends plenty of time under the light of their screens.

Balanced Depictions and Digital-Age Suspense

Simultaneously, the director has not crafted a rant against the emptiness of the influencer industry. While it is gratifying to watch CW manipulate various online personalities, and a sense reminiscent of Hitchcock of identification lets us to wish she doesn’t get caught, Harder is relatively sympathetic to the key influencer figures. Previously, he keyed into the loneliness Madison experienced while on supposedly envy-worthy vacations. Here, the director appears confident that merely watching Jacob at work will make it clear that he is selling false masculinity to other gullible men; he avoids caricaturing the character. He even grants Jacob a degree of respect by showing his true devotion to his partner; he’s a hypocrite, yet Ariana is a collaborator in his hypocrisy, not someone exploited by it.

The other side of this balanced approach is that it can sometimes appear as if he’s nodding at elements of contemporary digital culture without deeply exploring them. This is particularly evident regarding how he brings AI into the story, an intriguing development that lacks the psychological edge it should have. The retitled sequel for the film might give fans of the first movie hope for a larger-scale escalation, and the film ultimately delivers that, with an appropriately wild final act. But before that, it resembles more a sleek Alfred Hitchcock movie than a wild-eyed, technology-obsessed Brian De Palma thriller. Influencers’ extensive use of actual places might also be what keeps it from coming across like utter horror. The world might be saturated with content-churning influencers, digital deception, and self-serving tourism, but reality itself is still here, at least for now.