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“Everything about this stinks of a bad made-for-TV,” states an opportunistic commentator midway through the chilling follow-up Influencers. At that point, he’s being manipulatively dismissive toward an interviewee whose bizarre tale he previously said he trusted. But his description of what’s happening on screen isn’t wrong. Superficially, a pair of films on demand about a young woman who worms her way into the worlds of online influencers before killing them feels like a modern-day version of a tawdry but cable-ready Movie of the Week. The wild thing regarding Influencers is how much better it proves to be compared to much of the competition, irrespective of where you watch it. It is precisely the thriller capable of giving its peers a serious bout of FOMO.

Recapping the First Film and Setting the Stage

The 2022 film Influencer follows the enigmatic CW (Cassandra Naud) as she quietly chooses traveling alone influencer targets, lures them to their doom, and covers up those murders (at least temporarily) by taking control of their online accounts. The movie leaves off (spoiler ahead) with CW stranded on a deserted island off the coast of Thailand, after her most recent mark, Madison (Emily Tennant), reverses their roles on her.

This lends the 2025 Influencers some early mystery, as returning writer-director the director resumes with the character CW contentedly residing alongside her partner Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. On a journey to celebrate their one-year anniversary, British influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) draws CW's attention and anger.

CW comments to Diane that a person ought to attempt stranding a device-obsessed online personality in a place without any devices to see whether they can survive. Are we witnessing an origin-story prequel? Did CW become extremist after witnessing the special treatment afforded one fame-seeker?

Evolving Viewpoints and Global Pursuits

The story’s perspective shifts several more times, ultimately revealing those introductory moments' chronological position. The story revisits Madison, who has been cleared of carrying out CW’s crimes, yet still encounters suspicion over her recounting of the events, including the killing of her boyfriend. The film also follows Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), living in Bali and trying to boost his profile as half of a conservative-influencer duo alongside Ariana (Veronica Long), though his chosen platform is bro-heavy streams, rather than the Instagram photos that typically capture CW’s attention.

Naud remains terrifically magnetic in the part, which seems particularly custom-fit to her strengths. (She even created CW's striking wardrobe.) Although the follow-up's screentime balance leans heavily into CW — the first film seemed more balanced between her and Madison — it still works as a tale of dueling amateur detectives, as Madison and CW both use fake accounts, Insta-stalking, and an apparently unlimited travel budget to chase or evade 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.

Ingenious Filmmaking and Visual Wanderlust

The creative team for Influencers appear equally resourceful about finding stunning locations to film, though they were presumably less nefarious in their methods. Most of the film appears to be filmed in real places, providing it an authentic gravity that lingers even as numerous sequences consist of a relatively small cast of characters looking at computer or phone screens.

It follows the same logic that made the Bond franchise look so persistently lavish over the years: Indeed, big action and visual effects can display a big budget, however simply offering a kind of visual tour to viewers also seems deeply filmic. This is especially fitting for a narrative so rooted in the coexisting surface-level allure and try-hard grind of creating jealousy-worthy digital content.

All of the characters visiting Bali, similar to those who were in Thailand in the original, appear to enjoy entry to impossibly chic modern bungalows; there are movies concerning beach rescuers that don’t show off as much overhead swimming-pool footage. The characters have to convincingly inhabit these lush, far-flung locations to emphasize the uncomfortable paradox of how often everyone — including the woman exacting revenge upon the online stars' 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 watch CW exploit various online personalities, and a Hitchcockian sense of identification lets us to wish she doesn’t get caught, Harder is relatively sympathetic to the key influencer figures. Previously, he keyed into the loneliness Madison felt during supposedly envy-worthy vacations. In this film, Harder seems to trust that just observing Jacob at work will reveal that he’s peddling snake-oil masculinity to other doofuses; he avoids caricaturing the character further. He even grants Jacob a degree of respect through depicting his genuine loyalty to his partner; he is two-faced, yet Ariana is a partner in his hypocrisy, not a victim by it.

The other side of this balanced approach is that it can sometimes appear that he’s nodding at elements of modern online life without investigating them further. This is especially true regarding how he brings AI into the plot, an intriguing development that lacks the psychosexual kick it deserves. The retitled sequel for the film might give devotees of the original hope for a larger-scale escalation, and the film does eventually provide exactly that, with a suitably wild final act. But before that, it resembles more a sleek Alfred Hitchcock movie than an wild-eyed, tech-addled De Palma-style shocker. Influencers’ extensive use of real-world locations may also be what prevents it from coming across like utter horror. Our society might be saturated with always-online creators, online fraud, and exploitative travel, but reality itself is still here, for now.