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“The entire situation reeks of a bad TV movie,” states an opportunistic podcaster during the chilling follow-up Influencers. In the moment, he’s being dismissive in a calculated way of a guest with an outlandish story he previously claimed he believed. But his assessment of what’s happening in the movie isn’t wrong. Superficially, two films on demand chronicling a woman who insinuates herself into the lives of social media stars before killing them feels like the 21st-century equivalent of a lurid yet network-approved weekly TV movie. The wild thing about Influencers remains how much better it proves to be than plenty of its competition, irrespective of where you watch it. It’s the kind of thriller that should give other movies a bad case of FOMO.

Revisiting the Original and Establishing the Scene

The 2022 film Influencer follows the mysterious CW (Cassandra Naud) as she quietly chooses traveling alone influencer targets, entices them to their doom, and conceals those murders (for a time) by seizing control of their socials. The film concludes (spoiler ahead) with CW stranded on a deserted island off the coast of Thailand, after her most recent mark, Madison (Emily Tennant), turns the tables against her.

This lends 2025's Influencers a degree of ambiguity, as returning filmmaker Kurtis David Harder resumes with the character CW contentedly residing with her girlfriend Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. On a journey marking the couple’s first anniversary, British influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) catches CW's attention and ire.

CW remarks to Diane that someone should try stranding a phone-addicted online personality in a place without any devices and see if they can make it. Is this an origin-story prequel? Did CW become extremist after witnessing the preferential treatment afforded one clout-chaser?

Shifting Perspectives and Global Pursuits

The narrative viewpoint changes multiple times, ultimately revealing those early scenes’ chronological position. Harder catches up with Madison, who has been exonerated for carrying out CW's offenses, but still faces suspicion regarding her version of what happened, including 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 chosen platform is bro-heavy streams, rather than the curated images that typically capture CW's interest.

The actor continues to be terrifically magnetic in her role, which seems particularly tailor-made for her talents. (She also designed CW's striking wardrobe.) While the follow-up's screentime balance tips heavily toward CW — the first film felt more equally divided between the two women — it still works as a tale of rival investigators, with both women employ fake accounts, Insta-stalking, and a seemingly limitless travel fund to chase or evade one another. Then again, perhaps the vast resources aren't needed. Online personalities possess a talent for getting to explore posh places at little cost, an ability that CW echoes with her more overt scheming.

Resourceful Production and Visual Wanderlust

The creative team for Influencers appear equally resourceful about finding stunning locations to visit, although they were likely less nefarious in their methods. Most of the movie seems to be shot on location, providing it an authentic gravity that lingers even when many scenes involve a handful of actors of characters looking at digital devices.

It’s the same principle that made the James Bond movies look so consistently opulent for decades: Indeed, explosive action and special effects can show off a big budget, however just providing a travelogue of sorts for the audience also feels inherently cinematic. It’s also especially fitting for a narrative so rooted in the simultaneous superficial glamour and desperate hustle involved in producing jealousy-worthy online content.

All of the characters in Bali, similar to those who were in Thailand in the original, appear to enjoy access to unbelievably stylish contemporary villas; there are movies about lifeguards that don’t show off this much overhead swimming-pool video. These individuals have to convincingly inhabit these lush, remote places to emphasize the uneasy irony of how frequently each person — even the woman exacting revenge upon the online stars' narcissistic falseness — nonetheless devotes much time under the light of their screens.

Balanced Depictions and Tech-Savvy Tension

Simultaneously, the director has not crafted a rant targeting the vacuousness of the influencer industry. Though it can be satisfying to watch CW manipulate various online personalities, and a Hitchcockian sense of identification lets us to wish she evades capture, Harder is somewhat understanding of the key influencer figures. Previously, he keyed into the loneliness Madison felt during supposedly dream getaways. In this film, Harder seems to trust that merely watching Jacob in action will make it clear that he’s peddling snake-oil masculinity to other doofuses; he resists turning into a caricature the character. He even grants Jacob a measure of dignity by showing his true devotion to his girlfriend; he’s a hypocrite, but Ariana is a collaborator in his hypocrisy, not someone exploited of it.

The flip side of this balanced approach is that it may occasionally seem as if he is acknowledging elements of modern online life without deeply exploring them further. This is especially true of the way he brings AI into the story, a fascinating turn which misses the psychosexual kick it should have. The retitled sequel for the film might give fans of the first movie hope for an Aliens-style escalation, and the film ultimately delivers exactly that, with a suitably wild final act. But before that, it resembles more a sleek Hitchcock thriller 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. Our society may be overrun with always-online creators, online fraud, and self-serving tourism, but the world itself remains present, at least for now.