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“Everything about this stinks of a bad made-for-TV,” observes a cynical commentator midway through the chilling follow-up Influencers. At that point, he’s being dismissive in a calculated way toward an interviewee whose bizarre tale he once said he trusted. But his description of the events on screen isn’t wrong. Superficially, a pair of streaming movies about a young woman who insinuates herself into the worlds of social media stars and then murders them feels like the 21st-century equivalent of a tawdry yet cable-ready weekly TV movie. The surprising aspect regarding Influencers remains just how superior it proves to be compared to much of its competition, irrespective of screen size. It’s the kind of thriller capable of giving other movies a serious bout 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, entices them to their deaths, and conceals those deaths (for a time) by seizing control of their socials. The movie leaves off (spoiler ahead) with CW stranded on a deserted island off the coast of Thailand, after her latest target, Madison (Emily Tennant), turns the tables on her.

This lends 2025's Influencers a degree of mystery, when returning filmmaker the director resumes with the character CW contentedly residing with her girlfriend Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. On a journey marking the couple’s one-year anniversary, UK-based influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) catches CW’s eye and anger.

CW remarks to Diane that someone should try leaving a device-obsessed influencer somewhere without any devices to see if they can survive. Is this a backstory prequel? Did CW become extremist by seeing the special treatment given to one clout-chaser?

Evolving Viewpoints and International Chases

The narrative viewpoint shifts several more times, eventually clarifying those early scenes’ chronological position. The story revisits Madison, now exonerated for committing CW's offenses, yet still encounters doubt regarding her recounting of the events, which includes the killing of Madison’s boyfriend. We also follow Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), living in Bali and trying to juice his career as half of a conservative-influencer duo with Ariana (Veronica Long), though his chosen platform involves masculine-focused livestreams, as opposed to the curated images that typically capture CW’s attention.

The actor continues to be immensely captivating in her role, a role that appears particularly tailor-made to her strengths. (She even created CW's eye-catching wardrobe.) Although the follow-up's screentime balance leans heavily into CW — the original felt more equally divided between the two women — it still functions as a story of dueling investigators, with both women both use fake accounts, social media surveillance, and an apparently limitless travel fund to pursue or evade each other. Of course, perhaps the vast resources aren't needed. Influencers have a talent for gaining access to posh places at little cost, a skill which CW mirrors through her more blatant scamming.

Resourceful Production and Cinematic Travelogue

The creative team for Influencers seem similarly ingenious in locating beautiful places to visit, though they were likely more legitimate about it. Most of the film seems to be filmed in real places, giving it an authentic gravity that lingers even when numerous sequences consist of a handful of actors of people looking at digital devices.

It follows the same logic which allowed the Bond franchise look so consistently opulent for decades: Indeed, big action and visual effects can display large spending, however just providing a kind of visual tour for the audience also feels deeply filmic. This is particularly appropriate for a story so dependent on the simultaneous surface-level allure and desperate hustle of creating envy-inducing online content.

All of the characters in Bali, like those who were in Thailand in the original, seem to have access to unbelievably stylish contemporary villas; films exist concerning beach rescuers which don't feature this much aerial pool footage. These individuals have to convincingly inhabit these luxurious, remote places to highlight the uncomfortable paradox of how often each person — even the woman wreaking vengeance on the influencers’ self-centered phoniness — nevertheless devotes much time in the glow of their screens.

Balanced Depictions and Tech-Savvy Tension

Simultaneously, Harder hasn’t authored a screed targeting the vacuousness of the influencer industry. While it is satisfying to see CW exploit various online personalities, and a sense reminiscent of Hitchcock of identification allows us to hope she doesn’t get caught, Harder is relatively sympathetic to the major influencer characters. In the first movie, he tapped into the loneliness Madison felt during 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 resists turning into a caricature the character. He even grants Jacob a measure of dignity through depicting his true devotion to his partner; he is two-faced, but Ariana is a partner in his double standards, not someone exploited of it.

The other side of Harder’s even-keeled presentation is that it may occasionally seem as if he’s nodding at elements of modern online life without deeply exploring them. This is especially true of the way he introduces artificial intelligence into the plot, a fascinating turn that lacks the psychological edge it deserves. The retitled sequel for the film might give devotees of the original expectations of a larger-scale escalation, and the film does eventually provide exactly that, with a suitably wild final act. However, initially, it’s more like a sleek Hitchcock thriller than a frenzied, tech-addled Brian De Palma thriller. Influencers’ heavy use of actual places may also be what prevents it from coming across like pure nightmare fuel. Our society might be saturated with always-online creators, online fraud, and exploitative travel, but the world itself is still here, for now.