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“The entire situation reeks like a cheap TV movie,” remarks a cynical podcaster midway through the chilling follow-up Influencers. At that point, he’s being manipulatively dismissive toward an interviewee whose bizarre tale he once said he trusted. Yet his assessment of the events on screen isn't inaccurate. Superficially, a pair of films on demand chronicling a woman who worms her way into the worlds of social media stars before killing them feels like the 21st-century equivalent of a tawdry but network-approved weekly TV movie. The wild thing about Influencers remains how much better it is than plenty of the competition, irrespective of where you watch it. It’s the kind of thriller that should give other movies a serious bout of FOMO.

Revisiting the Original and Setting the Stage

2022’s Influencer tracks the mysterious CW (Cassandra Naud) as she methodically selects traveling alone influencer targets, entices them to their doom, and conceals those deaths (at least temporarily) by taking control of their online accounts. The film leaves off (spoiler ahead) with CW stranded on a deserted island off the coast of Thailand, following her most recent mark, Madison (Emily Tennant), turns the tables against her.

This lends 2025's Influencers some early ambiguity, as returning writer-director the director picks up with CW contentedly residing alongside her partner Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. During a trip marking their one-year anniversary, British influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) draws CW's attention and anger.

CW remarks to her partner that a person should try stranding a phone-addicted influencer somewhere without any devices and see whether they can make it. Is this an origin-story prequel? Did CW become extremist after witnessing the preferential treatment given to one clout-chaser?

Shifting Perspectives and International Chases

The narrative viewpoint shifts several more times, ultimately revealing those introductory moments' place in the timeline. The story revisits Madison, now cleared of carrying out CW's offenses, yet still encounters doubt regarding her version of the events, which includes the killing of Madison’s boyfriend. We also follow Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), based in Bali attempting to boost his profile as part of a conservative-influencer duo with Ariana (Veronica Long), although his chosen platform involves masculine-focused livestreams, as opposed to the Instagram photos that normally capture CW’s attention.

Naud remains terrifically magnetic in her role, which seems particularly custom-fit for her talents. (She also designed CW's eye-catching outfits.) While the sequel’s focus tips heavily toward CW — the original felt more equally divided between her and Madison — it still works as a tale of dueling investigators, with both women both use fake accounts, Insta-stalking, and an apparently unlimited travel budget to pursue and/or escape one another. Of course, maybe the unlimited budget isn’t necessary. Online personalities possess a talent for getting to explore luxurious locales at little cost, a skill that CW echoes through her more blatant scheming.

Ingenious Filmmaking and Visual Wanderlust

The filmmakers behind Influencers seem similarly ingenious about finding beautiful places to film, though they were presumably less nefarious in their methods. The vast majority of the movie seems to be filmed in real places, providing it an authentic gravity that remains even as numerous sequences involve a relatively small cast of characters looking at digital devices.

It’s the same principle that made the James Bond movies look so consistently opulent over the years: Indeed, big action and visual effects can display large spending, however simply offering a travelogue of sorts to viewers also feels deeply filmic. This is especially fitting for a narrative so dependent on the simultaneous surface-level allure and desperate hustle of creating jealousy-worthy online content.

Every character in Bali, like those who were in Thailand in the first film, appear to enjoy access to impossibly chic contemporary villas; films exist about lifeguards that don’t show off as much aerial pool video. These individuals must believably occupy these lush, remote places to emphasize the uneasy irony of how frequently each person — including the woman exacting revenge on the influencers’ self-centered phoniness — nevertheless devotes much time in the glow of their screens.

Balanced Depictions and Digital-Age Suspense

Simultaneously, Harder hasn’t authored a screed against the vacuousness of online fame. Though it is satisfying to watch CW manipulate different internet celebrities, and a sense reminiscent of Hitchcock of alignment lets us to hope she evades capture, Harder is relatively understanding of the key influencer figures. In the first movie, he tapped into the isolation Madison experienced while on supposedly envy-worthy vacations. In this film, the director appears confident that just observing Jacob in action will make it clear that he is selling snake-oil masculinity to other gullible men; he avoids turning into a caricature the character. He even gives Jacob a degree of respect by showing his true devotion to his partner; he is two-faced, but Ariana is a collaborator in his hypocrisy, not someone exploited of it.

The flip side of Harder’s even-keeled presentation is that it can sometimes appear that he’s nodding at bits of modern online life without investigating them further. This is particularly evident of the way he brings AI into the story, an intriguing development which misses the psychosexual kick it should have. The pluralized title for the film might give fans of the first movie hope for an Aliens-style ante-upping, and the movie does eventually provide exactly that, with a suitably chaotic climax. But before that, it’s more like a polished Alfred Hitchcock movie than an frenzied, technology-obsessed De Palma-style shocker. Influencers’ heavy use of real-world locations may also be what prevents it from coming across like utter horror. Our society may be overrun with content-churning influencers, online fraud, and self-serving tourism, but the world itself is still here, for now.