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“The entire situation smells like a bad TV movie,” remarks an opportunistic commentator during the chilling follow-up Influencers. In the moment, his tone is manipulatively dismissive of a guest whose bizarre tale he previously said he trusted. But his description of the events on screen isn’t wrong. On its face, two films on demand about a young woman who worms her way into the lives of online influencers before killing them feels like a modern-day version of a tawdry yet network-approved Movie of the Week. The wild thing about Influencers is how much better it is compared to much of the competition, irrespective of screen size. It is precisely the thriller capable of giving its peers a serious bout of FOMO.

Recapping the First Film and Establishing the Scene

2022’s Influencer tracks the mysterious CW (Cassandra Naud) while she quietly chooses traveling alone social media targets, lures them to their doom, and conceals those murders (at least temporarily) by taking control of their socials. The film concludes (spoiler ahead) with CW stranded on an uninhabited island near the coast of Thailand, following her latest target, Madison (Emily Tennant), turns the tables against her.

This provides 2025's Influencers a degree of ambiguity, when returning filmmaker the director picks up with the character CW contentedly residing alongside her partner Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. During a trip marking the couple’s one-year anniversary, British influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) catches CW's attention and ire.

CW comments to her partner that a person should try stranding a device-obsessed online personality somewhere with no technology to see whether they can make it. Are we witnessing an origin-story prequel? Was CW radicalized after witnessing the preferential treatment given to one clout-chaser?

Shifting Perspectives and Global Pursuits

The narrative viewpoint shifts several more times, ultimately revealing those introductory moments' chronological position. Harder catches up with Madison, who has been exonerated for carrying out CW’s crimes, but still faces suspicion regarding her recounting of the events, including the killing of her boyfriend. We also follow Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), based in Bali and trying to juice his career as part of a conservative-influencer duo alongside Ariana (Veronica Long), though his chosen platform involves masculine-focused livestreams, as opposed to the Instagram photos that normally capture CW’s attention.

Naud remains immensely captivating in the part, which seems especially tailor-made to her strengths. (She also designed CW's striking outfits.) Although the follow-up's focus tips heavily toward CW — the original seemed more balanced between her and Madison — it still works as a tale of rival amateur detectives, with both women both use fabricated profiles, Insta-stalking, and a seemingly limitless travel fund to chase or evade each other. Then again, perhaps the vast resources isn’t necessary. Influencers have a knack for getting to explore posh places without paying much, a skill that CW echoes through her more blatant scamming.

Ingenious Filmmaking and Cinematic Travelogue

The creative team for Influencers seem similarly resourceful in locating stunning locations to film, though they were likely more legitimate about it. The vast majority of the film appears to be shot on location, providing it a real-world weight that lingers even when many scenes consist of a handful of actors of characters staring at digital devices.

It follows the same logic which allowed the James Bond movies appear so persistently lavish over the years: Indeed, explosive action and special effects can show off a big budget, however simply offering a travelogue of sorts to viewers also feels deeply filmic. It’s also especially fitting for a story so rooted in the simultaneous surface-level allure and try-hard grind of creating envy-inducing online content.

All of the characters in Bali, like those who were in Thailand in the first film, seem to have entry to impossibly chic contemporary villas; there are movies concerning beach rescuers that don’t show off as much aerial pool footage. These individuals must believably inhabit these lush, far-flung locations to emphasize the uneasy irony of how frequently each person — including the woman wreaking vengeance upon the online stars' self-centered phoniness — nevertheless devotes much time under the light of their devices.

Balanced Depictions and Digital-Age Suspense

At the same time, the director has not crafted a screed against the vacuousness of online fame. Though it can be gratifying to watch CW manipulate various online personalities, and a sense reminiscent of Hitchcock of identification allows us to hope she evades capture, the filmmaker is somewhat understanding of the major influencer characters. In the first movie, he tapped into the loneliness Madison felt during supposedly envy-worthy vacations. Here, the director appears confident that just observing Jacob at work will reveal that he’s peddling false masculinity to other doofuses; he resists caricaturing the character further. He even gives Jacob a degree of respect through depicting his genuine loyalty to his partner; he’s a hypocrite, but Ariana is a collaborator in his double standards, not a victim by it.

The other side of Harder’s even-keeled presentation means it can sometimes appear that he is acknowledging bits of modern online life without investigating them further. This is particularly evident regarding how he introduces artificial intelligence into the plot, a fascinating turn which misses the psychological edge it deserves. The retitled sequel of Influencers might give devotees of the original expectations of a larger-scale ante-upping, and the film does eventually provide that, with an appropriately wild final act. However, initially, it’s more like a sleek Alfred Hitchcock movie than an wild-eyed, technology-obsessed De Palma-style shocker. Influencers’ heavy use of real-world locations may also be what keeps it from coming across like utter horror. The world might be saturated with always-online creators, digital deception, and exploitative travel, but the world itself is still here, at least for now.