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“Everything about this reeks like a bad TV movie,” states a cynical commentator midway through the chilling follow-up Influencers. At that point, he’s being manipulatively dismissive of a guest whose bizarre tale he previously said he trusted. Yet 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 lives of social media stars before killing them seems like the 21st-century equivalent of a tawdry yet cable-ready weekly TV movie. The wild thing about Influencers remains how much better it proves to be compared to much of its competition, irrespective of screen size. It is precisely the thriller capable of giving its peers a bad case of FOMO.

Recapping the First Film and Setting the Stage

2022’s Influencer tracks the mysterious CW (Cassandra Naud) while she quietly chooses traveling alone social media targets, entices them to their deaths, and covers up those murders (at least temporarily) by taking control of their online accounts. The movie concludes (spoiler ahead) with CW stranded on an uninhabited island off the coast of Thailand, after her latest target, Madison (Emily Tennant), reverses their roles against her.

This provides 2025's Influencers some early mystery, as returning writer-director the director resumes with the character CW happily living alongside her partner Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. On a journey to celebrate the couple’s first anniversary, UK-based influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) draws CW's attention and ire.

CW remarks to her partner that someone should try leaving a device-obsessed influencer somewhere with no technology to see whether they can survive. Is this a backstory prequel? Did CW become extremist by seeing the special treatment given to a single fame-seeker?

Shifting Perspectives and International Chases

The story’s perspective shifts several more times, eventually clarifying those early scenes’ chronological position. The story revisits Madison, who has been cleared of committing CW’s crimes, but still faces suspicion over her version of what happened, which includes the murder of her boyfriend. We also follow Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), based in Bali and trying to boost his profile as half of a right-wing-influencer duo alongside Ariana (Veronica Long), though his preferred medium involves masculine-focused livestreams, rather than the curated images that typically attract CW's interest.

Naud remains immensely captivating in the part, a role that appears particularly tailor-made to her strengths. (She also designed CW's eye-catching outfits.) While the sequel’s focus tips heavily toward CW — the original seemed more balanced between her and Madison — it still functions as a story of dueling amateur detectives, with both women both use fabricated profiles, Insta-stalking, and a seemingly unlimited travel budget to pursue and/or escape each other. Then again, maybe the unlimited budget isn’t necessary. Online personalities possess a knack for getting to explore luxurious locales at little cost, a skill that CW echoes with her more overt scheming.

Resourceful Production and Cinematic Travelogue

The creative team for Influencers seem similarly resourceful about finding stunning locations to film, though they were likely more legitimate about it. The vast majority of the movie seems to be filmed in real places, providing it a real-world weight that remains even when many scenes consist of a handful of actors of people staring at computer or phone screens.

It’s the same principle that made the Bond franchise look so consistently opulent for decades: Yes, big action and special effects can display large spending, however simply offering a kind of visual tour to viewers also seems inherently cinematic. This is especially fitting for a story so dependent on the simultaneous surface-level allure and try-hard grind of creating jealousy-worthy online content.

All of the characters in Bali, like those staying in Thailand in the original, seem to have access to unbelievably stylish contemporary villas; films exist about lifeguards that don’t show off as much overhead swimming-pool video. The characters must believably inhabit these lush, far-flung locations to emphasize the uneasy irony of how frequently everyone — including the woman wreaking vengeance upon the online stars' self-centered phoniness — nevertheless devotes much time in the glow of their screens.

Nuanced Portrayals and Digital-Age Suspense

At the same time, Harder hasn’t authored a rant against the vacuousness of the influencer industry. Though it is satisfying to see CW exploit various online personalities, and a sense reminiscent of Hitchcock of identification allows us to wish she doesn’t get caught, the filmmaker is somewhat understanding of the key influencer figures. In the first movie, he keyed into the isolation Madison experienced during ostensibly dream getaways. Here, Harder seems to trust that just observing Jacob at work will reveal that he is selling snake-oil masculinity to other gullible men; he avoids caricaturing the character. He even grants Jacob a measure of dignity through depicting his genuine loyalty to his girlfriend; he is two-faced, yet Ariana is a partner in his double standards, not someone exploited of it.

The flip side of this balanced approach is that it may occasionally seem as if he’s nodding at elements of contemporary digital culture without deeply exploring them further. This is particularly evident of the way he brings AI into the story, a fascinating turn which misses the psychosexual kick it should have. The retitled sequel of Influencers might give fans of the first movie hope for an Aliens-style escalation, and the film does eventually provide exactly that, with a suitably chaotic climax. However, initially, it resembles more a polished Alfred Hitchcock movie than an wild-eyed, technology-obsessed Brian De Palma thriller. Influencers’ heavy use of real-world locations may also be what keeps it from seeming like pure nightmare fuel. The world may be overrun with always-online creators, digital deception, and exploitative travel, but reality itself remains present, at least for now.