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“The entire situation stinks like a cheap TV movie,” remarks an opportunistic podcaster during the chilling follow-up Influencers. At that point, he’s being dismissive in a calculated way toward an interviewee whose bizarre tale he previously claimed he believed. But his description of the events in the movie isn’t wrong. Superficially, two films on demand chronicling a young woman who insinuates herself into the worlds of social media stars and then murders them feels like the 21st-century equivalent of a lurid yet cable-ready weekly TV movie. The surprising aspect regarding Influencers remains how much better it is compared to much of the competition, irrespective of where you watch it. It’s the kind of thriller that should give its peers a bad case of FOMO.

Recapping the Original and Setting the Stage

The 2022 film Influencer follows the enigmatic CW (Cassandra Naud) as she quietly chooses traveling alone influencer targets, lures them to their doom, and conceals those murders (at least temporarily) by taking control of their socials. The movie leaves off (spoiler ahead) with CW stranded on an uninhabited island near the coast of Thailand, after her latest target, Madison (Emily Tennant), turns the tables on her.

This lends the 2025 Influencers a degree of ambiguity, as returning writer-director Kurtis David Harder resumes with CW contentedly residing with her girlfriend Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. On a journey to celebrate the couple’s one-year anniversary, British influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) catches CW's attention and ire.

CW comments to her partner that someone should try leaving a device-obsessed online personality in a place without any devices to see if they can survive. Is this a backstory prequel? Was CW radicalized after witnessing the special treatment given to one clout-chaser?

Evolving Viewpoints and Global Pursuits

The narrative viewpoint changes multiple times, ultimately revealing those early scenes’ chronological position. The story revisits Madison, who has been exonerated for committing CW's offenses, but still faces suspicion regarding her version of what happened, including the killing of Madison’s boyfriend. The film also follows Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), living in Bali and trying to juice his career as part of a conservative-influencer power couple with Ariana (Veronica Long), although his preferred medium is bro-heavy streams, rather than the Instagram photos that typically attract CW's interest.

Naud remains terrifically magnetic in her role, which seems particularly custom-fit for her talents. (She also designed CW's striking outfits.) While the sequel’s screentime balance tips heavily toward CW — the original felt more equally divided between her and Madison — it still functions as a tale of rival amateur detectives, with both women employ fake accounts, social media surveillance, and a seemingly unlimited travel budget to chase or evade each other. Then again, perhaps the vast resources isn’t necessary. Online personalities possess a knack for getting to explore posh places at little cost, an ability which CW mirrors with her more overt scheming.

Ingenious Filmmaking and Visual Wanderlust

The creative team for Influencers appear equally ingenious in locating beautiful places to visit, although they were likely more legitimate in their methods. Most of the film appears to be shot on location, giving it a real-world weight that lingers even as numerous sequences consist of a relatively small cast of characters looking at computer or phone screens.

It follows the same logic that made the James Bond movies appear so consistently opulent over the years: Yes, explosive action and visual effects can display a big budget, but just providing a kind of visual tour for the audience also feels inherently cinematic. It’s also especially fitting for a narrative so dependent on the simultaneous superficial glamour and try-hard grind of creating envy-inducing digital content.

Every character visiting Bali, like those who were in Thailand in the original, seem to have access to unbelievably stylish modern bungalows; films exist concerning beach rescuers which don't feature this much aerial pool footage. These individuals have to convincingly occupy these luxurious, remote places to highlight the uneasy irony of how frequently everyone — including the woman wreaking vengeance on the influencers’ narcissistic falseness — nonetheless devotes much time under the light of their screens.

Balanced Depictions and Tech-Savvy Tension

At the same time, the director has not crafted a screed targeting the vacuousness of online fame. While it can be gratifying to watch CW exploit different internet celebrities, and a Hitchcockian sense of identification allows us to wish she doesn’t get caught, the filmmaker is somewhat understanding of the key influencer figures. Previously, he tapped into the isolation Madison experienced while on supposedly dream getaways. In this film, the director appears confident that just observing Jacob at work will make it clear that he is selling snake-oil masculinity to other doofuses; he avoids caricaturing the character. He even gives Jacob a degree of respect through depicting his true devotion to his girlfriend; he is two-faced, yet Ariana is a partner in his double standards, not someone exploited by it.

The flip side of Harder’s even-keeled presentation is that it may occasionally seem that he’s nodding at bits of modern online life without deeply exploring them. This is especially true of the way he introduces artificial intelligence into the plot, an intriguing development which misses the psychosexual kick it should have. The pluralized title of Influencers might give fans of the first movie expectations of an Aliens-style escalation, and the movie ultimately delivers that, with a suitably wild final act. But before that, it’s more like a polished Alfred Hitchcock movie than an frenzied, tech-addled De Palma-style shocker. Influencers’ heavy use of actual places may also be what keeps it from coming across like pure nightmare fuel. Our society may be overrun with content-churning influencers, digital deception, and self-serving tourism, but the world itself remains present, for now.