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“The entire situation smells of a cheap TV movie,” observes an opportunistic podcaster during the chilling follow-up Influencers. At that point, his tone is manipulatively dismissive toward an interviewee whose bizarre tale he once said he trusted. Yet his assessment of what’s happening in the movie isn’t wrong. On its face, a pair of films on demand about a young woman who insinuates herself into the worlds of social media stars and then murders them feels like a modern-day version of a tawdry yet cable-ready weekly TV movie. The surprising aspect about Influencers is just how superior it proves to be compared to much of its competition, regardless of screen size. It is precisely the thriller that should give other movies a serious bout of FOMO.

Recapping the Original and Setting the Stage

The 2022 film Influencer follows the enigmatic CW (Cassandra Naud) as she quietly chooses solo-traveling social media targets, lures them to their doom, and conceals those deaths (at least temporarily) by taking control of their socials. The movie concludes (spoiler ahead) with CW stranded on an uninhabited island near the coast of Thailand, after her latest target, Madison (Emily Tennant), turns the tables on her.

This provides 2025's Influencers a degree of ambiguity, as returning writer-director the director picks up with CW happily living with her girlfriend Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. During a trip to celebrate their first anniversary, British influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) draws CW’s eye and ire.

CW comments to her partner that someone should try stranding a phone-addicted influencer somewhere without any devices to see whether they can survive. Is this an origin-story prequel? Did CW become extremist after witnessing the special treatment given to a single fame-seeker?

Shifting Perspectives and Global Pursuits

The story’s perspective shifts several more times, ultimately revealing those early scenes’ chronological position. The story revisits Madison, now cleared of committing CW's offenses, yet still encounters suspicion over her recounting of the events, which includes the murder of Madison’s boyfriend. The film also follows Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), based in Bali attempting to boost his profile as part of a right-wing-influencer duo with Ariana (Veronica Long), though his preferred medium is bro-heavy streams, rather than the curated images that typically capture CW’s attention.

Naud remains terrifically magnetic in the part, which seems particularly tailor-made to her strengths. (She also designed CW's striking wardrobe.) Although the sequel’s screentime balance leans heavily into CW — the original seemed more balanced between her and Madison — it still functions as a tale of dueling amateur detectives, as Madison and CW employ fabricated profiles, social media surveillance, and a seemingly unlimited travel budget to chase or evade each other. Then again, maybe the vast resources isn’t necessary. Influencers have a knack for gaining access to posh places without paying much, a skill that CW echoes with her more overt scheming.

Resourceful Production and Visual Wanderlust

The filmmakers behind Influencers seem similarly resourceful about finding stunning locations to visit, although they were presumably less nefarious in their methods. Most of the movie appears to be filmed in real places, giving it an authentic gravity that lingers even as many scenes involve a relatively small cast of characters staring at computer or phone screens.

It’s the same principle that made the James Bond movies appear so consistently opulent over the years: Indeed, big action and special effects can display a big budget, but simply offering a travelogue of sorts for the audience also feels inherently cinematic. It’s also especially fitting for a story so rooted in the simultaneous superficial glamour and try-hard grind of creating envy-inducing digital content.

Every character in Bali, similar to those who were in Thailand in the first film, appear to enjoy entry to impossibly chic contemporary villas; there are movies about lifeguards that don’t show off this much overhead swimming-pool video. These individuals have to convincingly occupy these luxurious, far-flung locations to highlight the uneasy irony of how often each person — including the woman wreaking vengeance upon the online stars' self-centered phoniness — nonetheless devotes much time under the light of their devices.

Balanced Depictions and Digital-Age Suspense

At the same time, the director has not crafted a screed against the vacuousness of the influencer industry. Though it can be satisfying to watch CW manipulate different internet celebrities, and a sense reminiscent of Hitchcock of identification lets us to hope she evades capture, Harder is relatively sympathetic to the major influencer characters. In the first movie, he tapped into the loneliness Madison felt while on ostensibly envy-worthy vacations. In this film, the director appears confident that merely watching Jacob in action 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 partner; he is two-faced, yet Ariana is a collaborator 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 bits of contemporary digital culture without deeply exploring them. This is especially true regarding how he brings AI into the story, a fascinating turn that lacks the psychosexual kick it should have. The retitled sequel of Influencers might give fans of the first movie hope for a larger-scale escalation, and the movie does eventually provide that, with an appropriately wild final act. However, initially, it resembles more a sleek Hitchcock thriller than an wild-eyed, tech-addled De Palma-style shocker. Influencers’ heavy use of real-world locations might also be what prevents it from coming across like pure nightmare fuel. The world may be overrun with always-online creators, online fraud, and exploitative travel, but the world itself remains present, for now.