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“Everything about this smells like a cheap TV movie,” states a cynical podcaster during the chilling follow-up Influencers. At that point, he’s being manipulatively dismissive of a guest with an bizarre tale he once said he trusted. Yet his assessment of the events on screen isn’t wrong. On its face, two films on demand about a young woman who insinuates herself into the worlds of online influencers and then murders them seems like a modern-day version of a lurid yet network-approved Movie of the Week. The wild thing regarding Influencers is how much better it proves to be than plenty of the competition, regardless of where you watch it. It is precisely the thriller capable of giving its peers a bad case of FOMO.

Revisiting the First Film and Setting the Stage

The 2022 film Influencer follows the mysterious CW (Cassandra Naud) while she quietly chooses traveling alone influencer targets, entices them to their deaths, and conceals those deaths (at least temporarily) by seizing control of their socials. The film leaves off (spoiler ahead) with CW stranded on an uninhabited island near the coast of Thailand, following her latest target, Madison (Emily Tennant), turns the tables on her.

This provides 2025's Influencers a degree of ambiguity, when returning writer-director the director picks up with the character CW contentedly residing alongside her partner Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. During a trip marking their first anniversary, British influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) catches CW’s eye and anger.

CW remarks to her partner that someone should try stranding a device-obsessed online personality in a place without any devices to see whether they can make it. Are we witnessing a backstory prequel? Was CW radicalized after witnessing the preferential treatment afforded a single fame-seeker?

Shifting Perspectives and International Chases

The narrative viewpoint shifts several more times, eventually clarifying those introductory moments' chronological position. The story revisits Madison, who has been exonerated for carrying out CW’s crimes, but still faces doubt regarding her version of the events, including the murder of Madison’s boyfriend. We also follow Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), living in Bali and trying to boost his profile as half of a conservative-influencer power couple with Ariana (Veronica Long), though his chosen platform involves masculine-focused livestreams, rather than the curated images that typically capture CW's interest.

Naud remains immensely captivating in the part, a role that appears especially tailor-made for her talents. (She also designed CW's striking outfits.) While the follow-up's screentime balance leans heavily into CW — the original seemed more balanced between her and Madison — it still works as a tale of rival amateur detectives, as Madison and CW employ fabricated profiles, Insta-stalking, and an apparently unlimited travel budget to pursue or evade each other. Then again, perhaps the vast resources aren't needed. Online personalities possess a talent for getting to explore luxurious locales without paying much, an ability that CW echoes through her more blatant scamming.

Ingenious Filmmaking and Visual Wanderlust

The creative team for Influencers appear equally resourceful in locating stunning locations to film, though they were likely less nefarious about it. The vast majority of the movie seems to be shot on location, providing it a real-world weight that remains even as many scenes consist of a handful of actors of people staring at digital devices.

It follows the same logic which allowed the James Bond movies appear so persistently lavish for decades: Yes, explosive action and visual effects can display a big budget, but just providing a kind of visual tour for the audience also feels deeply filmic. It’s also especially fitting for a story so rooted in the coexisting superficial glamour and try-hard grind involved in producing envy-inducing online content.

All of the characters in Bali, similar to those staying in Thailand in the first film, seem to have access to unbelievably stylish modern bungalows; there are movies about lifeguards which don't feature this much overhead swimming-pool video. The characters must believably inhabit these luxurious, far-flung locations to emphasize the uneasy irony of how frequently everyone — even the woman exacting revenge upon the online stars' self-centered phoniness — nonetheless devotes much time in the glow of their devices.

Balanced Depictions and Digital-Age Suspense

Simultaneously, Harder hasn’t authored a rant targeting the emptiness of the influencer industry. Though it can be satisfying to see CW exploit different internet celebrities, and a sense reminiscent of Hitchcock of alignment allows us to wish she doesn’t get caught, Harder is relatively understanding of the major influencer characters. Previously, he tapped into the loneliness Madison felt while on ostensibly dream getaways. In this film, Harder seems to trust that just observing Jacob in action will reveal that he is selling false masculinity to other gullible men; he avoids caricaturing the character. He even grants Jacob a degree of respect by showing his true devotion to his girlfriend; he’s a hypocrite, yet Ariana is a collaborator in his double standards, not a victim of it.

The other side of this balanced approach means it may occasionally seem that he’s nodding at bits of contemporary digital culture without deeply exploring them further. This is especially true regarding how he introduces artificial intelligence into the plot, a fascinating turn that lacks the psychosexual kick it deserves. The retitled sequel for the film could offer fans of the first movie hope for a larger-scale ante-upping, and the film ultimately delivers exactly that, with a suitably wild final act. However, initially, it’s more like a sleek Hitchcock thriller than a frenzied, tech-addled De Palma-style shocker. Influencers’ extensive use of actual places might also be what prevents it from coming across like utter horror. Our society might be saturated with content-churning influencers, digital deception, and self-serving tourism, but reality itself remains present, at least for now.