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“The entire situation smells of a cheap TV movie,” observes an opportunistic commentator during the chilling follow-up Influencers. In the moment, he’s being dismissive in a calculated way toward an interviewee whose outlandish story he once said he trusted. But his description of what’s happening on screen isn't inaccurate. On its face, two films on demand chronicling a woman who worms her way into the worlds 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 remains just how superior it proves to be compared to much of the competition, irrespective of where you watch it. It is precisely the thriller that should give other movies a bad case of FOMO.

Recapping the Original and Setting the Stage

2022’s Influencer tracks the enigmatic CW (Cassandra Naud) as she quietly chooses traveling alone influencer targets, lures them to their deaths, and conceals those deaths (for a time) by seizing control of their socials. The film concludes (spoiler ahead) with CW marooned on a deserted island near the coast of Thailand, after her most recent mark, Madison (Emily Tennant), reverses their roles on her.

This provides 2025's Influencers a degree of ambiguity, when returning filmmaker the director picks up 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) draws CW's attention and anger.

CW remarks to Diane that someone ought to attempt stranding a device-obsessed online personality somewhere without any devices and see whether they can survive. Is this an origin-story prequel? Was CW radicalized by seeing the preferential treatment afforded a single clout-chaser?

Shifting Perspectives and Global Pursuits

The narrative viewpoint changes multiple times, ultimately revealing those introductory moments' place in the timeline. The story revisits Madison, now cleared of committing CW's offenses, yet still encounters suspicion regarding her recounting of the events, including the killing of her boyfriend. We also follow Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), based in Bali attempting to juice his career as half of a conservative-influencer duo alongside Ariana (Veronica Long), though his chosen platform is bro-heavy streams, as opposed to the curated images that typically attract CW’s attention.

The actor continues to be terrifically magnetic in the part, a role that appears especially custom-fit to her strengths. (She also designed CW's striking outfits.) Although the follow-up's screentime balance leans heavily into CW — the original felt more equally divided between her and Madison — it still functions as a tale of rival investigators, with both women both use fabricated profiles, Insta-stalking, and a seemingly limitless travel fund to pursue and/or escape one another. Of course, maybe the vast resources isn’t necessary. Influencers have a knack for gaining access to posh places at little cost, a skill that CW echoes through her more blatant scamming.

Resourceful Production and Cinematic Travelogue

The creative team for Influencers seem similarly ingenious about finding stunning locations to visit, although they were likely more legitimate in their methods. The vast majority of the movie appears to be shot on location, providing it a real-world weight that remains even as numerous sequences involve a handful of actors of people staring at digital devices.

It’s the same principle that made the Bond franchise look so consistently opulent for decades: Indeed, big action and special effects can display large spending, but simply offering a travelogue of sorts to viewers also feels deeply filmic. This is particularly appropriate for a story so dependent on the coexisting surface-level allure and desperate hustle involved in producing jealousy-worthy digital content.

All of the characters in Bali, like those staying in Thailand in the first film, seem to have entry to impossibly chic modern bungalows; films exist concerning beach rescuers that don’t show off as much aerial pool video. These individuals have to convincingly inhabit these lush, remote places to emphasize the uncomfortable paradox of how often everyone — including the woman wreaking vengeance on the influencers’ self-centered phoniness — nonetheless devotes much time under the light of their devices.

Nuanced Portrayals and Digital-Age Suspense

At the same time, Harder hasn’t authored a screed targeting the emptiness of the influencer industry. Though it is satisfying to see CW exploit various online personalities, and a sense reminiscent of Hitchcock of alignment allows us to hope she evades capture, the filmmaker is somewhat sympathetic to the key influencer figures. In the first movie, he tapped into the loneliness Madison experienced during supposedly envy-worthy vacations. In this film, the director appears confident that merely watching Jacob in action will reveal that he is selling false masculinity to other gullible men; he resists caricaturing the character further. He even grants Jacob a measure of dignity through depicting his genuine loyalty to his girlfriend; he’s a hypocrite, yet Ariana is a collaborator in his hypocrisy, not someone exploited by it.

The other side of this balanced approach is that it may occasionally seem that he’s nodding at bits of modern online life without deeply exploring them further. This is especially true of the way he brings AI into the story, an intriguing development that lacks the psychological edge it deserves. The retitled sequel of Influencers could offer devotees of the original hope for an Aliens-style ante-upping, and the film does eventually provide exactly that, with a suitably wild final act. However, initially, it resembles more a sleek Hitchcock thriller than an wild-eyed, technology-obsessed De Palma-style shocker. Influencers’ heavy use of actual places might also be what keeps it from coming across like pure nightmare fuel. The world may be overrun with content-churning influencers, online fraud, and self-serving tourism, but the world itself remains present, for now.