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“This whole affair smells of a cheap TV movie,” observes an opportunistic podcaster midway through the chilling follow-up Influencers. At that point, his tone is manipulatively dismissive toward an interviewee with an outlandish story he once said he trusted. But his assessment of the events on screen isn’t wrong. Superficially, a pair of films on demand about a woman who insinuates herself into the worlds of online influencers and then murders them feels like the 21st-century equivalent of a lurid yet network-approved Movie of the Week. The surprising aspect about Influencers remains just how superior it is than plenty of the competition, regardless of where you watch it. It is precisely the thriller capable of giving other movies a serious bout of FOMO.

Recapping the Original and Setting the Stage

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

This provides 2025's Influencers some early mystery, as returning writer-director the director picks up with the character CW contentedly residing alongside her partner Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. On a journey to celebrate the couple’s first anniversary, British influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) catches CW’s eye and ire.

CW comments to Diane that a person should try leaving 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 by seeing the special treatment afforded a single fame-seeker?

Evolving Viewpoints and International Chases

The narrative viewpoint shifts several more times, ultimately revealing those early scenes’ place in the timeline. Harder catches up with Madison, who has been exonerated for committing CW's offenses, yet still encounters suspicion over her version of what happened, which includes the killing of Madison’s boyfriend. We also follow Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), based in Bali attempting to boost his profile as part of a right-wing-influencer duo alongside Ariana (Veronica Long), although his chosen platform is bro-heavy streams, rather than the curated images that typically capture CW's interest.

Naud remains immensely captivating in the part, a role that appears particularly custom-fit for her talents. (She also designed CW's eye-catching wardrobe.) While the sequel’s screentime balance tips heavily toward CW — the original seemed more balanced between her and Madison — it still works as a tale of rival investigators, with both women both use fake accounts, Insta-stalking, and a seemingly limitless travel fund to chase and/or escape each other. Of course, perhaps the unlimited budget aren't needed. Influencers have a talent for getting to explore luxurious locales at little cost, a skill that CW echoes through her more blatant scamming.

Ingenious Filmmaking and Cinematic Travelogue

The creative team for Influencers appear equally resourceful about finding stunning locations to film, though they were presumably more legitimate about it. Most of the movie seems to be filmed in real places, providing it a real-world weight that remains even when numerous sequences involve a relatively small cast of people staring at digital devices.

It follows the same logic that made the James Bond movies appear so persistently lavish for decades: Indeed, big action and visual effects can display a big budget, but simply offering a kind of visual tour for the audience also feels inherently cinematic. It’s also particularly appropriate for a story so dependent on the coexisting superficial glamour and desperate hustle 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 concerning beach rescuers which don't feature as much aerial pool footage. These individuals have to convincingly occupy these luxurious, remote places to emphasize the uncomfortable paradox of how often everyone — even the woman exacting revenge upon the online stars' narcissistic falseness — nevertheless spends plenty of time under the light of their devices.

Balanced Depictions and Digital-Age Suspense

Simultaneously, Harder hasn’t authored a rant targeting the emptiness of the influencer industry. While it can be gratifying to see CW manipulate various online personalities, and a sense reminiscent of Hitchcock of identification lets us to hope she evades capture, the filmmaker is somewhat understanding of the major influencer characters. In the first movie, he tapped into the isolation Madison felt while on supposedly dream getaways. Here, the director appears confident that just observing Jacob in action will make it clear that he’s peddling snake-oil masculinity to other gullible men; he resists caricaturing the character further. He even grants Jacob a measure of dignity through depicting his true devotion to his girlfriend; he’s a hypocrite, yet Ariana is a collaborator in his hypocrisy, not someone exploited of it.

The other side of Harder’s even-keeled presentation means it can sometimes appear as if he is acknowledging elements of modern online life without deeply exploring them. This is especially true regarding how he brings AI into the plot, an intriguing development which misses the psychological edge it deserves. The pluralized title of Influencers could offer devotees of the original hope for an Aliens-style ante-upping, and the film does eventually provide exactly that, with a suitably chaotic climax. But before that, it resembles more a sleek Hitchcock thriller than a wild-eyed, tech-addled De Palma-style shocker. Influencers’ heavy use of actual places might also be what keeps it from seeming like pure nightmare fuel. The world might be saturated with content-churning influencers, online fraud, and self-serving tourism, but the world itself is still here, for now.