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“The entire situation reeks like a bad made-for-TV,” observes an opportunistic commentator during the chilling follow-up Influencers. In the moment, his tone is manipulatively dismissive of a guest whose outlandish story he once said he trusted. But his description of the events in the movie isn’t wrong. Superficially, a pair of streaming movies chronicling a young woman who worms her way into the lives of social media stars and then murders them seems like a modern-day version of a lurid yet network-approved weekly TV movie. The surprising aspect about Influencers is how much better it is than plenty of the competition, irrespective of where you watch it. It’s the kind of thriller that should give its peers a serious bout of FOMO.

Recapping the Original and Establishing the Scene

The 2022 film Influencer tracks the enigmatic CW (Cassandra Naud) while she quietly chooses solo-traveling social media targets, entices them to their deaths, and conceals those murders (at least temporarily) by seizing control of their socials. The film concludes (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 on her.

This lends 2025's Influencers a degree of mystery, as returning filmmaker the director resumes with CW happily living with her girlfriend Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. On a journey to celebrate their one-year anniversary, British influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) catches CW’s eye and ire.

CW comments to her partner that a person ought to attempt stranding a device-obsessed influencer somewhere with no technology and see if they can make it. Are we witnessing an origin-story prequel? Was CW radicalized after witnessing the special treatment afforded a single fame-seeker?

Evolving Viewpoints and International Chases

The story’s perspective changes multiple times, ultimately revealing those introductory moments' chronological position. Harder catches up with Madison, who has been exonerated for carrying out CW’s crimes, but still faces suspicion regarding her recounting of the events, which includes the murder of Madison’s boyfriend. We also follow Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), living in Bali attempting to boost his profile as half of a conservative-influencer duo alongside Ariana (Veronica Long), although his chosen platform involves masculine-focused livestreams, as opposed to the Instagram photos that normally capture CW's interest.

Naud remains immensely captivating in her role, which seems particularly tailor-made for her talents. (She also designed CW's eye-catching outfits.) While the sequel’s screentime balance leans heavily into CW — the original seemed more balanced between the two women — it still functions as a story of dueling amateur detectives, with both women both use fake accounts, Insta-stalking, and an apparently unlimited travel budget to pursue and/or escape each other. Of course, perhaps the vast resources isn’t necessary. Influencers have a knack for getting to explore posh places at little cost, a skill which CW mirrors through her more blatant scheming.

Resourceful Production and Cinematic Travelogue

The creative team for Influencers appear equally resourceful in locating stunning locations to film, although they were presumably more legitimate in their methods. Most of the film seems to be filmed in real places, providing it an authentic gravity that remains even when numerous sequences consist of a handful of actors of characters looking at digital devices.

It’s the same principle which allowed the Bond franchise look so consistently opulent over the years: Indeed, explosive action and special effects can display a big budget, but just providing a travelogue of sorts for the audience also seems inherently cinematic. This is particularly appropriate for a story so dependent on the simultaneous superficial glamour and try-hard grind involved in producing jealousy-worthy online content.

All of the characters visiting Bali, similar to those who were in Thailand in the original, appear to enjoy access to unbelievably stylish contemporary villas; films exist concerning beach rescuers that don’t show off this much aerial pool video. These individuals have to convincingly occupy these luxurious, remote places to highlight the uneasy irony of how often everyone — even the woman wreaking vengeance upon the online stars' self-centered phoniness — nevertheless spends plenty of time under the light of their screens.

Balanced Depictions and Tech-Savvy Tension

At the same time, the director has not crafted a rant targeting the vacuousness of online fame. Though it is satisfying to see CW exploit different internet celebrities, and a Hitchcockian sense of alignment lets us to hope she doesn’t get caught, the filmmaker is relatively sympathetic to the key influencer figures. In the first movie, he tapped into the isolation Madison experienced during supposedly dream getaways. Here, Harder seems to trust that just observing Jacob at work will make it clear that he’s peddling false masculinity to other gullible men; he avoids turning into a caricature the character further. He even grants Jacob a degree of respect by showing his true devotion to his girlfriend; he’s a hypocrite, yet Ariana is a partner in his double standards, not someone exploited by it.

The other side of Harder’s even-keeled presentation is that it can sometimes appear as if he’s nodding at elements of contemporary digital culture without investigating them. This is particularly evident regarding how he introduces artificial intelligence into the story, a fascinating turn that lacks the psychosexual kick it should have. The pluralized title for the film might give devotees of the original expectations of an Aliens-style ante-upping, and the film ultimately delivers exactly that, with a suitably wild final act. However, initially, it resembles more a sleek Hitchcock thriller than an frenzied, tech-addled Brian De Palma thriller. Influencers’ extensive use of actual places may also be what keeps it from coming across like utter horror. The world might be saturated with always-online creators, digital deception, and self-serving tourism, but the world itself remains present, at least for now.