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“Everything about this reeks like a cheap made-for-TV,” observes a cynical podcaster during the chilling follow-up Influencers. In the moment, his tone is dismissive in a calculated way of a guest with an outlandish story he previously claimed he believed. But his description of what’s happening on screen isn’t wrong. Superficially, a pair of films on demand chronicling a young woman who worms her way into the lives of online influencers and then murders them seems like the 21st-century equivalent of a tawdry but cable-ready weekly TV movie. The wild thing regarding Influencers remains how much better it is than plenty of the competition, regardless 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 Establishing the Scene

The 2022 film Influencer follows the mysterious CW (Cassandra Naud) while she methodically selects traveling alone social media targets, lures them to their doom, and conceals those deaths (for a time) by seizing control of their online accounts. The film leaves off (spoiler ahead) with CW marooned on an uninhabited island off the coast of Thailand, following her latest target, Madison (Emily Tennant), reverses their roles against her.

This provides the 2025 Influencers some early mystery, as returning writer-director the director resumes with CW contentedly residing alongside her partner Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. During a trip to celebrate the couple’s first anniversary, British influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) draws CW's attention and anger.

CW comments to her partner that someone should try leaving a phone-addicted influencer in a place with no technology to see whether they can survive. Are we witnessing an origin-story prequel? Was CW radicalized after witnessing the preferential treatment given to a single clout-chaser?

Shifting Perspectives and International Chases

The narrative viewpoint changes multiple times, eventually clarifying those early scenes’ chronological position. Harder catches up with Madison, now cleared of committing CW's offenses, but still faces suspicion regarding her recounting of the events, including the murder of her boyfriend. The film also follows Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), based in Bali and trying to juice his career as part of a right-wing-influencer duo alongside Ariana (Veronica Long), though his chosen platform is bro-heavy streams, as opposed to the Instagram photos that typically capture CW’s attention.

Naud remains immensely captivating in the part, a role that appears particularly tailor-made to her strengths. (She also designed CW's eye-catching wardrobe.) Although the sequel’s focus tips heavily toward CW — the original seemed more balanced between her and Madison — it still works as a story of rival amateur detectives, as Madison and CW both use fake accounts, social media surveillance, and a seemingly unlimited travel budget to pursue and/or escape one another. Of course, perhaps the unlimited budget isn’t necessary. Online personalities possess a talent for gaining access to luxurious locales without paying much, an ability that CW echoes through her more blatant scamming.

Resourceful Production and Visual Wanderlust

The filmmakers behind Influencers seem similarly ingenious about finding beautiful places to visit, although they were likely more legitimate in their methods. Most of the movie seems to be filmed in real places, giving it an authentic gravity that lingers even as many scenes consist of a handful of actors of characters looking at computer or phone screens.

It’s the same principle which allowed the Bond franchise look so consistently opulent for decades: Indeed, big action and special effects can show off a big budget, but simply offering a kind of visual tour to viewers also seems deeply filmic. This is especially fitting for a story so rooted in the simultaneous surface-level allure and desperate hustle involved in producing envy-inducing digital content.

All of the characters visiting Bali, similar to those staying in Thailand in the original, appear to enjoy entry to impossibly chic modern bungalows; there are movies about lifeguards which don't feature as much overhead swimming-pool video. These individuals must believably occupy these luxurious, far-flung locations to highlight the uneasy irony of how frequently each person — even the woman wreaking vengeance upon the online stars' self-centered phoniness — nevertheless spends plenty of time in the glow of their screens.

Balanced Depictions and Digital-Age Suspense

At the same time, Harder hasn’t authored a screed against the vacuousness of the influencer industry. Though it is gratifying to watch CW manipulate different internet celebrities, and a Hitchcockian sense of identification allows us to wish she evades capture, Harder is relatively sympathetic to the key influencer figures. Previously, he tapped into the isolation Madison experienced during ostensibly dream getaways. Here, Harder seems to trust that just observing Jacob at work will reveal that he is selling snake-oil masculinity to other gullible men; he avoids turning into a caricature the character. He even gives Jacob a measure of dignity by showing his genuine loyalty to his girlfriend; he’s a hypocrite, but Ariana is a collaborator in his hypocrisy, not someone exploited by it.

The other side of this balanced approach means it may occasionally seem as if he is acknowledging elements of contemporary digital culture without deeply exploring them. This is especially true of the way he brings AI into the plot, a fascinating turn that lacks the psychological edge it deserves. The pluralized title for the film could offer 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 resembles more a polished Hitchcock thriller than a wild-eyed, technology-obsessed Brian De Palma thriller. Influencers’ heavy use of actual places might also be what keeps 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, at least for now.