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“This whole affair reeks like a bad TV movie,” states an opportunistic podcaster midway through the chilling follow-up Influencers. In the moment, his tone is manipulatively dismissive of a guest with an bizarre tale he once said he trusted. Yet his assessment of the events on screen isn't inaccurate. On its face, a pair of films on demand about a woman who worms her way into the lives of online influencers before killing them feels like the 21st-century equivalent of a tawdry but network-approved Movie of the Week. The wild thing regarding Influencers is just how superior it proves to be than plenty of the competition, irrespective of where you watch it. It’s the kind of thriller that should give other movies a bad case of FOMO.

Recapping the Original and Establishing the Scene

The 2022 film Influencer tracks the mysterious CW (Cassandra Naud) while she methodically selects solo-traveling social media targets, lures them to their doom, and conceals those deaths (at least temporarily) by taking control of their socials. The movie leaves off (spoiler ahead) with CW stranded on a deserted island near the coast of Thailand, after her most recent mark, Madison (Emily Tennant), reverses their roles on her.

This lends 2025's Influencers some early mystery, as returning filmmaker the director picks up with the character CW contentedly residing with her girlfriend Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. On a journey marking their first anniversary, UK-based influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) catches CW’s eye and ire.

CW remarks to Diane that a person should try stranding a device-obsessed influencer somewhere without any devices to see if they can make it. Are we witnessing an origin-story prequel? Was CW radicalized after witnessing the preferential treatment given to a single fame-seeker?

Evolving Viewpoints and Global Pursuits

The story’s perspective shifts several more times, eventually clarifying those early scenes’ chronological position. The story revisits Madison, who has been cleared of carrying out CW's offenses, but still faces suspicion over her version of what happened, which includes the murder of her boyfriend. The film also follows Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), living in Bali and trying to juice his career as half of a conservative-influencer duo with Ariana (Veronica Long), though his preferred medium involves masculine-focused livestreams, as opposed to the Instagram photos that typically attract CW's interest.

The actor continues to be terrifically magnetic in the part, a role that appears especially custom-fit to her strengths. (She even created CW's eye-catching outfits.) While the follow-up's screentime balance leans heavily into CW — the first film felt more equally divided between the two women — it still functions as a tale of dueling amateur detectives, as Madison and CW employ fake accounts, Insta-stalking, and a seemingly limitless travel fund to pursue and/or escape one another. Then again, perhaps the vast resources aren't needed. Influencers have a talent for gaining access to luxurious locales at little cost, an ability that CW echoes through her more blatant scamming.

Ingenious Filmmaking and Visual Wanderlust

The creative team for Influencers seem similarly resourceful about finding stunning locations to film, though they were presumably less nefarious about it. Most of the film appears to be filmed in real places, giving it a real-world weight that remains even as many scenes involve a relatively small cast of characters staring at digital devices.

It follows the same logic which allowed the Bond franchise look so persistently lavish for decades: Yes, big action and special effects can display a big budget, however simply offering a kind of visual tour to viewers also seems deeply filmic. This is particularly appropriate for a story so rooted in the coexisting superficial glamour and try-hard grind of creating envy-inducing online content.

Every character visiting Bali, like those staying in Thailand in the first film, seem to have entry to impossibly chic contemporary villas; films exist concerning beach rescuers which don't feature this much overhead swimming-pool video. The characters have to convincingly inhabit these luxurious, remote places to emphasize the uneasy irony of how often everyone — even the woman exacting revenge upon the online stars' narcissistic falseness — nonetheless spends plenty of time in the glow of their devices.

Nuanced Portrayals and Digital-Age Suspense

Simultaneously, Harder hasn’t authored a rant against the emptiness of online fame. Though it can be gratifying to see CW manipulate various online personalities, and a sense reminiscent of Hitchcock of alignment allows us to wish she doesn’t get caught, Harder is relatively understanding of the major influencer characters. In the first movie, he keyed into the isolation Madison experienced during ostensibly envy-worthy vacations. Here, Harder seems to trust that just observing Jacob in action will reveal that he’s peddling snake-oil masculinity to other gullible men; he resists turning into a caricature the character. He even grants Jacob a measure of dignity by showing his genuine loyalty to his partner; he is two-faced, yet Ariana is a collaborator in his double standards, not a victim by it.

The flip side of Harder’s even-keeled presentation means it can sometimes appear that he is acknowledging elements of contemporary digital culture without investigating them further. This is especially true of the way he brings AI into the story, an intriguing development that lacks the psychosexual kick it deserves. The retitled sequel for the film might give devotees of the original hope for an Aliens-style ante-upping, and the movie ultimately delivers exactly that, with an appropriately wild final act. However, initially, it’s more like a polished Alfred Hitchcock movie than a wild-eyed, technology-obsessed De Palma-style shocker. Influencers’ extensive use of actual places might also be what prevents it from coming across like utter horror. The world may be overrun with content-churning influencers, online fraud, and self-serving tourism, but reality itself is still here, at least for now.