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“Everything about this stinks like a bad made-for-TV,” observes a cynical podcaster during the chilling follow-up Influencers. In the moment, his tone is manipulatively dismissive toward an interviewee whose outlandish story he once said he trusted. But his assessment of what’s happening on screen isn’t wrong. Superficially, a pair of streaming movies chronicling a young woman who worms her way into the lives of social media stars before killing them feels like a modern-day version of a lurid yet network-approved weekly TV movie. The wild thing about Influencers remains just how superior it is compared to much of the competition, regardless of where you watch it. It’s the kind of thriller that should give its peers a serious bout of FOMO.

Revisiting the First Film and Setting the Stage

The 2022 film Influencer follows the mysterious CW (Cassandra Naud) as she methodically selects solo-traveling influencer targets, lures them to their doom, and conceals those murders (at least temporarily) by taking control of their socials. The movie concludes (spoiler ahead) with CW marooned on a deserted island near the coast of Thailand, after her most recent mark, Madison (Emily Tennant), turns the tables on her.

This lends 2025's Influencers some early ambiguity, as returning writer-director the director resumes with the character CW contentedly residing with her girlfriend Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. On a journey to celebrate the couple’s one-year anniversary, British influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) catches CW’s eye and ire.

CW remarks to Diane that someone ought to attempt leaving a device-obsessed influencer somewhere with no technology and see whether they can survive. Is this an origin-story prequel? Did CW become extremist by seeing the preferential treatment given to one clout-chaser?

Shifting Perspectives and International Chases

The narrative viewpoint shifts several more times, eventually clarifying those early scenes’ chronological position. The story revisits Madison, who has been cleared of carrying out CW’s crimes, yet still encounters doubt regarding her version of what happened, including the killing of her boyfriend. The film also follows Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), living in Bali attempting to juice his career as half of a conservative-influencer power couple with Ariana (Veronica Long), though his chosen platform is bro-heavy streams, as opposed to the Instagram photos that normally capture CW’s attention.

Naud remains terrifically magnetic in the part, a role that appears especially tailor-made to her strengths. (She even created CW's eye-catching outfits.) While the sequel’s screentime balance tips heavily toward CW — the first film felt more equally divided between her and Madison — it still works as a tale of rival amateur detectives, as Madison and CW employ fabricated profiles, social media surveillance, and an apparently unlimited travel budget to pursue and/or escape each other. Of course, perhaps the unlimited budget aren't needed. Influencers have a knack for getting to explore luxurious locales at little cost, an ability that CW echoes with her more overt scheming.

Ingenious Filmmaking and Visual Wanderlust

The filmmakers behind Influencers appear equally ingenious in locating beautiful places to film, though they were likely less nefarious about it. The vast majority of the film appears to be filmed in real places, providing it an authentic gravity that remains even when many scenes consist of a relatively small cast of characters staring at digital devices.

It follows the same logic which allowed the Bond franchise look so consistently opulent for decades: Indeed, explosive action and visual effects can display large spending, however simply offering a kind of visual tour to viewers also seems deeply filmic. It’s also especially fitting for a story so dependent on the coexisting surface-level allure and try-hard grind of creating envy-inducing digital content.

Every character in Bali, similar to those staying in Thailand in the original, appear to enjoy access to unbelievably stylish modern bungalows; there are movies about lifeguards that don’t show off this much aerial pool video. These individuals have to convincingly inhabit these luxurious, remote places to emphasize the uneasy irony of how often everyone — even the woman wreaking vengeance upon the online stars' self-centered phoniness — nevertheless spends plenty of time under the light of their devices.

Nuanced Portrayals and Tech-Savvy Tension

At the same time, Harder hasn’t authored a screed targeting the vacuousness 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 experienced while on supposedly envy-worthy vacations. In this film, Harder seems to trust that merely watching Jacob at work will reveal that he is selling snake-oil masculinity to other doofuses; he avoids turning into a caricature the character further. He even gives Jacob a measure of dignity through depicting his genuine loyalty to his girlfriend; he’s a hypocrite, but Ariana is a collaborator in his double standards, not someone exploited 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 deeply exploring them further. This is especially true regarding how he introduces artificial intelligence into the story, an intriguing development that lacks the psychosexual kick it deserves. The retitled sequel of Influencers could offer devotees of the original expectations of a larger-scale ante-upping, and the movie does eventually provide exactly that, with an appropriately chaotic climax. But before that, it’s more like a sleek Alfred Hitchcock movie than a frenzied, tech-addled De Palma-style shocker. Influencers’ heavy use of real-world locations may also be what prevents it from seeming like pure nightmare fuel. The world may be overrun with always-online creators, digital deception, and exploitative travel, but reality itself is still here, at least for now.