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“This whole affair stinks like a cheap TV movie,” states an opportunistic 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 assessment of the events in the movie isn’t wrong. On its face, two films on demand chronicling a woman who worms her way into the worlds of social media stars before killing them seems like the 21st-century equivalent of a lurid but network-approved weekly TV movie. The wild thing about Influencers remains how much better it is than plenty of the competition, regardless of where you watch it. It is precisely the thriller that should give its peers a bad case of FOMO.

Revisiting the First Film and Establishing the Scene

The 2022 film Influencer tracks the enigmatic CW (Cassandra Naud) as she quietly chooses traveling alone influencer targets, entices them to their deaths, and conceals those deaths (for a time) by seizing control of their online accounts. The film leaves off (spoiler ahead) with CW marooned on a deserted island off the coast of Thailand, after her latest target, Madison (Emily Tennant), turns the tables against her.

This lends the 2025 Influencers a degree of ambiguity, when returning writer-director the director resumes with the character CW happily living with her girlfriend Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. During a trip marking their one-year anniversary, British influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) catches CW's attention and anger.

CW remarks to her partner that someone ought to attempt stranding a device-obsessed online personality in a place with no technology to see if they can make it. Are we witnessing a backstory prequel? Did CW become extremist by seeing the special treatment given to a single clout-chaser?

Evolving Viewpoints and International Chases

The story’s perspective changes multiple times, eventually clarifying those introductory moments' chronological position. Harder catches up with Madison, who has been cleared of carrying out CW’s crimes, but still faces suspicion over her version of the events, which includes the killing of Madison’s boyfriend. We also follow Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), living in Bali attempting to juice his career as part of a right-wing-influencer duo with Ariana (Veronica Long), though his preferred medium is bro-heavy streams, as opposed to the curated images that normally capture CW's interest.

Naud remains terrifically magnetic in her role, a role that appears especially custom-fit for her talents. (She even created CW's eye-catching outfits.) While the follow-up's focus leans heavily into CW — the first film seemed more balanced between the two women — it still functions as a story of rival amateur detectives, as Madison and CW employ fabricated profiles, social media surveillance, and an apparently unlimited travel budget to chase or evade one another. Of course, perhaps the vast resources isn’t necessary. Online personalities possess a talent for getting to explore luxurious locales without paying much, a skill which CW mirrors with her more overt scheming.

Ingenious Filmmaking and Visual Wanderlust

The creative team for Influencers seem similarly resourceful in locating beautiful places to film, although they were presumably more legitimate about it. Most of the film appears to be filmed in real places, providing it an authentic gravity that remains even when numerous sequences involve a relatively small cast of characters staring at digital devices.

It follows the same logic that made the James Bond movies look so consistently opulent for decades: Yes, explosive action and special effects can display large spending, however simply offering a kind of visual tour to viewers also seems inherently cinematic. This is particularly appropriate for a narrative so rooted in the coexisting surface-level allure and desperate hustle involved in producing envy-inducing online content.

All of the characters visiting Bali, similar to those who were in Thailand in the first film, seem to have entry to unbelievably stylish contemporary villas; there are movies concerning beach rescuers that don’t show off this much overhead swimming-pool video. These individuals must believably occupy these luxurious, far-flung locations to emphasize the uneasy irony of how often everyone — including the woman wreaking vengeance upon the online stars' self-centered phoniness — nonetheless devotes much time in the glow of their screens.

Nuanced Portrayals and Digital-Age Suspense

At the same time, the director has not crafted a rant against the emptiness of the influencer industry. Though it is gratifying to watch CW manipulate various online personalities, and a Hitchcockian sense of alignment allows us to wish she evades capture, the filmmaker is relatively understanding of the key influencer figures. In the first movie, he keyed into the loneliness Madison felt during ostensibly dream getaways. Here, Harder seems to trust that merely watching Jacob in action will reveal that he is selling snake-oil masculinity to other doofuses; he resists caricaturing the character further. He even gives Jacob a degree of respect by showing his true devotion to his partner; he’s a hypocrite, yet Ariana is a collaborator in his hypocrisy, not someone exploited of it.

The other side of Harder’s even-keeled presentation is that it can sometimes appear as if he is acknowledging bits of modern online life without deeply exploring them. This is particularly evident regarding how he brings AI into the story, a fascinating turn which misses the psychosexual kick it should have. The retitled sequel for the film could offer fans of the first movie expectations of an Aliens-style escalation, and the movie does eventually provide that, with a suitably wild final act. But before that, it resembles more a polished Hitchcock thriller than an wild-eyed, tech-addled De Palma-style shocker. Influencers’ heavy use of actual places may also be what prevents it from coming across like utter horror. Our society may be overrun with content-churning influencers, digital deception, and self-serving tourism, but the world itself remains present, for now.