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“Everything about this smells of a bad made-for-TV,” observes an opportunistic podcaster during the chilling follow-up Influencers. At that point, he’s being manipulatively dismissive toward an interviewee whose bizarre tale he once said he trusted. Yet his description of the events in the movie isn't inaccurate. Superficially, a pair of streaming movies chronicling a woman who insinuates herself into the lives of online influencers before killing them seems like the 21st-century equivalent of a tawdry yet cable-ready weekly TV movie. The wild thing regarding Influencers remains just how superior it proves to be than plenty of the competition, irrespective of screen size. It’s the kind of thriller capable of giving its peers a bad case of FOMO.

Recapping the First Film and Establishing the Scene

2022’s Influencer follows the enigmatic CW (Cassandra Naud) while she quietly chooses solo-traveling social media targets, lures them to their deaths, and conceals those murders (for a time) by seizing control of their socials. The movie leaves off (spoiler ahead) with CW stranded on an uninhabited island near the coast of Thailand, after her most recent mark, Madison (Emily Tennant), turns the tables against her.

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

CW comments to her partner that a person should try leaving a phone-addicted influencer somewhere without any devices to see whether they can survive. Is this an origin-story prequel? Did CW become extremist after witnessing the special treatment afforded a single clout-chaser?

Evolving Viewpoints and Global Pursuits

The narrative viewpoint changes multiple times, eventually clarifying those early scenes’ chronological position. Harder catches up with Madison, now cleared of carrying out CW’s crimes, but still faces suspicion regarding her version of the events, which includes the murder of Madison’s boyfriend. The film also follows Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), living in Bali attempting to boost his profile as part of a right-wing-influencer duo alongside Ariana (Veronica Long), although his chosen platform is bro-heavy streams, as opposed to the curated images that normally attract CW's interest.

Naud remains terrifically magnetic in the part, which seems particularly tailor-made for her talents. (She even created CW's eye-catching outfits.) Although the sequel’s screentime balance tips heavily toward CW — the original seemed more balanced between the two women — it still functions as a story of rival investigators, as Madison and CW both use fabricated profiles, Insta-stalking, and an apparently limitless travel fund to chase and/or escape each other. Then again, perhaps the unlimited budget aren't needed. Influencers have a knack for getting to explore luxurious locales at little cost, a skill that CW echoes with her more overt scamming.

Ingenious Filmmaking and Cinematic Travelogue

The creative team for Influencers seem similarly ingenious in locating stunning locations to film, although they were likely more legitimate about it. The vast majority of the film seems to be shot on location, providing it an authentic gravity that remains even as numerous sequences involve a handful of actors of characters looking at computer or phone screens.

It follows the same logic which allowed the James Bond movies appear so persistently lavish over the years: Yes, big action and special effects can display large spending, but just providing a kind of visual tour for the audience also seems inherently cinematic. It’s also especially fitting for a story so dependent on the coexisting surface-level allure and desperate hustle involved in producing envy-inducing digital content.

Every character visiting Bali, like those who were in Thailand in the first film, seem to have access to impossibly chic modern bungalows; there are movies concerning beach rescuers which don't feature this much aerial pool video. The characters have to convincingly inhabit these lush, remote places to highlight the uneasy irony of how often everyone — including the woman exacting revenge on the influencers’ self-centered phoniness — nevertheless spends plenty of time under the light of their devices.

Balanced Depictions and Tech-Savvy Tension

At the same time, Harder hasn’t authored a rant targeting the vacuousness of online fame. While it is gratifying to see CW exploit different internet celebrities, and a sense reminiscent of Hitchcock of alignment allows us to hope she doesn’t get caught, the filmmaker is relatively sympathetic to the major influencer characters. In the first movie, he tapped into the loneliness Madison experienced while on supposedly dream getaways. Here, the director appears confident that merely watching Jacob at work will make it clear that he’s peddling snake-oil masculinity to other gullible men; he avoids turning into a caricature the character further. He even grants Jacob a degree of respect through depicting his true devotion to his girlfriend; he’s a hypocrite, but Ariana is a partner in his double standards, not someone exploited of it.

The flip side of Harder’s even-keeled presentation means it can sometimes appear that he is acknowledging bits of modern online life without deeply exploring them. This is especially true of the way he introduces artificial intelligence into the story, a fascinating turn that lacks the psychological edge it deserves. The pluralized title of Influencers might give fans of the first movie hope for a larger-scale ante-upping, and the film ultimately delivers exactly that, with a suitably wild final act. However, initially, it resembles more a polished Alfred Hitchcock movie than an frenzied, tech-addled Brian De Palma thriller. Influencers’ extensive use of real-world locations might also be what keeps it from seeming like utter horror. The world may be overrun with content-churning influencers, digital deception, and exploitative travel, but the world itself remains present, for now.