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“Everything about this smells like a bad made-for-TV,” remarks a cynical commentator during 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 said he trusted. Yet his assessment of the events in the movie isn’t wrong. Superficially, a pair of films on demand chronicling a young woman who insinuates herself into the worlds of social media stars before killing them seems like a modern-day version of a tawdry yet network-approved Movie of the Week. The surprising aspect regarding Influencers is how much better it is compared to much of its competition, irrespective of where you watch it. It’s the kind of thriller that should give other movies a bad case of FOMO.

Revisiting the Original and Establishing the Scene

The 2022 film Influencer tracks the enigmatic CW (Cassandra Naud) as she methodically selects solo-traveling influencer targets, lures them to their doom, and conceals those murders (at least temporarily) by taking control of their online accounts. The film concludes (spoiler ahead) with CW stranded on an uninhabited island near the coast of Thailand, after her latest target, Madison (Emily Tennant), turns the tables against her.

This lends 2025's Influencers some early mystery, as returning writer-director Kurtis David Harder resumes with CW contentedly residing with her girlfriend Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. During a trip marking their one-year anniversary, UK-based influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) draws CW’s eye and ire.

CW comments to Diane that someone should try leaving a device-obsessed online personality in a place with no technology to see if they can survive. Is this a backstory prequel? Was CW radicalized by seeing the special treatment given to a single clout-chaser?

Shifting Perspectives and International Chases

The narrative viewpoint shifts several more times, eventually clarifying those introductory moments' place in the timeline. The story revisits Madison, who has been cleared of carrying out CW’s crimes, yet still encounters doubt over her recounting of what happened, which includes the murder of Madison’s boyfriend. The film also follows Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), based in Bali and trying to boost his profile as part of a conservative-influencer duo alongside Ariana (Veronica Long), though his chosen platform involves masculine-focused livestreams, as opposed to the curated images that typically attract CW's interest.

Naud remains immensely captivating in the part, a role that appears particularly tailor-made to her strengths. (She also designed CW's striking wardrobe.) While the follow-up's screentime balance leans heavily into CW — the first film felt more equally divided between her and Madison — it still works as a story of rival investigators, as Madison and CW both use fake accounts, Insta-stalking, and an apparently unlimited travel budget to pursue and/or escape one another. Of course, perhaps the unlimited budget isn’t necessary. Online personalities possess a knack for getting to explore posh places without paying much, an ability which CW mirrors through her more blatant scamming.

Ingenious Filmmaking and Cinematic Travelogue

The creative team for Influencers appear equally resourceful in locating beautiful places to visit, though they were presumably less nefarious in their methods. Most of the movie appears to be filmed in real places, giving it an authentic gravity that lingers even as numerous sequences consist of a relatively small cast of people staring at digital devices.

It’s the same principle that made the James Bond movies appear so consistently opulent for decades: Indeed, big action and special effects can show off large spending, however simply offering a kind of visual tour for the audience also feels deeply filmic. It’s also especially fitting for a narrative so rooted in the simultaneous superficial glamour and desperate hustle of creating jealousy-worthy online content.

All of the characters in Bali, similar to those staying in Thailand in the original, appear to enjoy entry to unbelievably stylish modern bungalows; there are movies about lifeguards which don't feature as much aerial pool footage. These individuals must believably occupy these lush, far-flung locations to highlight the uncomfortable paradox of how frequently each person — including the woman exacting revenge upon the online stars' self-centered phoniness — nevertheless devotes much time under the light of their screens.

Balanced Depictions and Digital-Age Suspense

Simultaneously, the director has not crafted a rant targeting the emptiness of the influencer industry. While it is gratifying to see CW manipulate various online personalities, and a Hitchcockian sense of identification lets us to hope she evades capture, Harder is relatively sympathetic to the major influencer characters. Previously, he tapped into the loneliness Madison felt during supposedly envy-worthy vacations. Here, the director appears confident that merely watching Jacob in action will reveal that he is selling false masculinity to other doofuses; he avoids caricaturing the character further. He even grants Jacob a measure of dignity through depicting his genuine loyalty to his partner; he is two-faced, but Ariana is a collaborator in his hypocrisy, not a victim of it.

The other side of this balanced approach is that it may occasionally seem that he’s nodding at bits of contemporary digital culture without investigating them. This is especially true of the way he brings AI into the plot, a fascinating turn that lacks the psychosexual kick it deserves. The retitled sequel for the film might give fans of the first movie hope for a larger-scale ante-upping, and the movie ultimately delivers that, with an appropriately chaotic climax. But before that, it’s more like a sleek Hitchcock thriller than a frenzied, technology-obsessed Brian De Palma thriller. Influencers’ heavy use of actual places may also be what prevents it from seeming like utter horror. Our society might be saturated with content-churning influencers, digital deception, and self-serving tourism, but the world itself remains present, for now.