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“This whole affair stinks of a bad TV movie,” remarks an opportunistic podcaster during the chilling follow-up Influencers. At that point, he’s being dismissive in a calculated way of a guest with an outlandish story he previously said he trusted. Yet his description of the events in the movie isn’t wrong. Superficially, two streaming movies about a young woman who worms her way into the lives of social media stars and then murders them feels like a modern-day version of a lurid yet cable-ready Movie of the Week. The surprising aspect about Influencers remains just how superior it proves to be compared to much of the competition, regardless of screen size. It is precisely the thriller capable of giving other movies a serious bout of FOMO.

Revisiting the First Film and Setting the Stage

2022’s Influencer tracks the enigmatic CW (Cassandra Naud) as she quietly chooses traveling alone influencer targets, lures them to their deaths, and conceals 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, following her most recent mark, Madison (Emily Tennant), reverses their roles on her.

This lends 2025's Influencers some early ambiguity, as returning filmmaker the director picks up with the character 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 attention and ire.

CW remarks to her partner that a person ought to attempt stranding a phone-addicted online personality somewhere without any devices and see whether they can survive. Is this a backstory prequel? Did CW become extremist after witnessing the preferential treatment afforded a single fame-seeker?

Shifting Perspectives and International Chases

The narrative viewpoint shifts several more times, ultimately revealing those introductory moments' place in the timeline. Harder catches up with Madison, now exonerated for carrying out CW's offenses, yet still encounters doubt over her version of the events, which includes the killing of Madison’s boyfriend. The film also follows Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), based 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 curated images that normally capture CW’s attention.

Naud remains immensely captivating in her role, which seems especially custom-fit to her strengths. (She also designed CW's striking outfits.) While the sequel’s screentime balance leans heavily into CW — the first film felt more equally divided between her and Madison — it still works as a tale of dueling amateur detectives, with both women both use fake accounts, social media surveillance, and a seemingly limitless travel fund to pursue and/or escape each other. Of course, maybe the unlimited budget isn’t necessary. Influencers have a knack for getting to explore posh places without paying much, an ability which CW mirrors through her more blatant scheming.

Ingenious Filmmaking and Visual Wanderlust

The creative team for Influencers appear equally resourceful in locating stunning locations to film, though they were presumably less nefarious about it. Most of the movie appears to be shot on location, giving it a real-world weight that remains even as numerous sequences consist of a relatively small cast of characters staring at digital devices.

It follows the same logic which allowed the Bond franchise look so persistently lavish for decades: Indeed, explosive action and special effects can display large spending, but simply offering a travelogue of sorts to viewers also feels deeply filmic. This is particularly appropriate for a narrative so rooted in the coexisting surface-level allure and try-hard grind involved in producing envy-inducing online content.

All of the characters visiting Bali, similar to those staying in Thailand in the first film, appear to enjoy entry to impossibly chic contemporary villas; there are movies concerning beach rescuers that don’t show off this much overhead swimming-pool video. The characters have to convincingly occupy these luxurious, far-flung locations to highlight the uneasy irony of how frequently everyone — including the woman wreaking vengeance on the influencers’ self-centered phoniness — nevertheless spends plenty of time in the glow of their devices.

Nuanced Portrayals and Tech-Savvy Tension

Simultaneously, Harder hasn’t authored a screed targeting the emptiness of online fame. While it can be gratifying to see CW manipulate different internet celebrities, and a sense reminiscent of Hitchcock of alignment lets us to hope she doesn’t get caught, the filmmaker is somewhat sympathetic to the major influencer characters. In the first movie, he tapped into the isolation Madison experienced while on ostensibly dream getaways. In this film, the director appears confident that merely watching Jacob in action will reveal 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 genuine loyalty to his partner; he is two-faced, but Ariana is a collaborator in his double standards, not a victim of it.

The flip side of Harder’s even-keeled presentation means it can sometimes appear that he’s nodding at bits of contemporary digital culture without deeply exploring them. This is particularly evident regarding how he introduces artificial intelligence into the plot, an intriguing development that lacks the psychological edge it should have. The retitled sequel of Influencers could offer devotees of the original expectations of an Aliens-style ante-upping, and the movie ultimately delivers exactly that, with an appropriately chaotic climax. But before that, it’s more like a polished Hitchcock thriller than an frenzied, technology-obsessed De Palma-style shocker. Influencers’ extensive use of real-world locations might also be what prevents it from seeming like utter horror. Our society might be saturated with content-churning influencers, digital deception, and exploitative travel, but the world itself is still here, at least for now.