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“Everything about this stinks of a bad TV movie,” observes a cynical commentator during the chilling follow-up Influencers. At that point, he’s being manipulatively dismissive of a guest whose outlandish story he once claimed he believed. Yet his description of the events on screen isn’t wrong. Superficially, a pair of streaming movies chronicling a young woman who insinuates herself into the lives of social media stars and then murders them feels like the 21st-century equivalent of a tawdry yet cable-ready weekly TV movie. The wild thing regarding Influencers remains how much better it is compared to much of the competition, regardless of where you watch it. It is precisely the thriller capable of giving its peers a serious bout of FOMO.

Revisiting the First Film and Establishing the Scene

2022’s Influencer follows the mysterious CW (Cassandra Naud) while she methodically selects traveling alone social media targets, entices them to their doom, and conceals those murders (for a time) by seizing control of their socials. The movie leaves off (spoiler ahead) with CW marooned on a deserted island near the coast of Thailand, following her latest target, Madison (Emily Tennant), reverses their roles against her.

This provides 2025's Influencers a degree of mystery, as returning writer-director the director resumes with the character CW contentedly residing with her girlfriend Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. On a journey to celebrate the couple’s first anniversary, British influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) catches CW’s eye and anger.

CW comments to Diane that a person should try stranding a device-obsessed influencer somewhere with no technology to see if they can make it. Are we witnessing an origin-story prequel? Was CW radicalized by seeing the preferential treatment afforded a single fame-seeker?

Evolving Viewpoints and Global Pursuits

The story’s perspective shifts several more times, ultimately revealing those introductory moments' place in the timeline. The story revisits Madison, now exonerated for carrying out CW’s crimes, but still faces doubt over her version of what happened, which includes the murder of her boyfriend. The film also follows Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), living in Bali attempting to boost his profile as half of a right-wing-influencer power couple with Ariana (Veronica Long), though his chosen platform involves masculine-focused livestreams, rather than the curated images that normally attract CW’s attention.

Naud remains terrifically magnetic in her role, a role that appears especially tailor-made to her strengths. (She even created CW's striking wardrobe.) Although the sequel’s focus tips heavily toward CW — the original seemed more balanced between her and Madison — it still functions as a story of rival investigators, with both women employ fake accounts, social media surveillance, and a seemingly limitless travel fund to chase and/or escape one another. Of course, maybe the unlimited budget isn’t necessary. Influencers have a knack for gaining access to posh places at little cost, a skill that CW echoes with her more overt scamming.

Ingenious Filmmaking and Visual Wanderlust

The creative team for Influencers seem similarly resourceful about finding stunning locations to visit, although they were likely less nefarious about it. Most of the movie seems to be filmed in real places, giving it an authentic gravity that remains even as numerous sequences consist of a relatively small cast of characters looking at digital devices.

It follows the same logic which allowed the James Bond movies appear so persistently lavish for decades: Indeed, big action and visual effects can show off a big budget, however simply offering a travelogue of sorts to viewers also feels deeply filmic. This is particularly appropriate for a narrative so dependent on the simultaneous surface-level allure and desperate hustle of creating jealousy-worthy online content.

Every character visiting Bali, like those staying in Thailand in the original, seem to have access to impossibly chic contemporary villas; there are movies about lifeguards which don't feature this much aerial pool footage. These individuals have to convincingly occupy these luxurious, far-flung locations to highlight the uneasy irony of how often everyone — including the woman exacting revenge on the influencers’ narcissistic falseness — nevertheless spends plenty of 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 emptiness of the influencer industry. While it is gratifying to see CW manipulate various online personalities, and a Hitchcockian sense of identification allows us to wish she evades capture, the filmmaker is somewhat sympathetic to the major influencer characters. In the first movie, he keyed into the loneliness Madison felt during ostensibly envy-worthy vacations. Here, Harder seems to trust that merely watching Jacob at work will reveal that he’s peddling false masculinity to other doofuses; he avoids turning into a caricature the character further. He even gives Jacob a degree of respect by showing his true devotion to his partner; he’s a hypocrite, but Ariana is a collaborator in his hypocrisy, not a victim by it.

The other side of this balanced approach means it can sometimes appear that he’s nodding at elements of modern online life without investigating them further. This is especially true regarding how he introduces artificial intelligence into the plot, an intriguing development which misses the psychological edge it should have. The retitled sequel for the film might give devotees of the original hope for a larger-scale ante-upping, and the movie does eventually provide that, with an appropriately wild final act. But before that, it’s more like a sleek Alfred Hitchcock movie than an frenzied, technology-obsessed Brian De Palma thriller. Influencers’ extensive use of actual places might also be what prevents it from coming across like utter horror. Our society might be saturated with always-online creators, online fraud, and self-serving tourism, but reality itself is still here, for now.