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“Everything about this smells like a cheap TV movie,” remarks an opportunistic podcaster during the chilling follow-up Influencers. In the moment, his tone is dismissive in a calculated way of a guest whose outlandish story he once said he trusted. Yet his assessment of the events in the movie isn't inaccurate. On its face, two films on demand chronicling 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 tawdry yet network-approved weekly TV movie. The surprising aspect about Influencers is how much better it is than plenty of the competition, irrespective of screen size. It’s the kind of suspense film that should give other movies a bad case of FOMO.

Recapping the Original and Establishing the Scene

The 2022 film Influencer follows the mysterious CW (Cassandra Naud) while she methodically selects solo-traveling influencer targets, lures them to their doom, and covers up those deaths (at least temporarily) by taking control of their online accounts. The film leaves off (spoiler ahead) with CW stranded on an uninhabited island off the coast of Thailand, after her latest target, Madison (Emily Tennant), turns the tables on her.

This lends the 2025 Influencers some early mystery, when returning writer-director the director picks up with CW happily living alongside her partner Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. During a trip to celebrate the couple’s first anniversary, British influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) draws CW's attention and anger.

CW comments to her partner that someone should try stranding a device-obsessed influencer somewhere without any devices and see if they can make it. Is this a backstory prequel? Did CW become extremist by seeing the special treatment afforded a single fame-seeker?

Shifting Perspectives and Global Pursuits

The story’s perspective shifts several more times, ultimately revealing those introductory moments' place in the timeline. Harder catches up with Madison, who has been exonerated for carrying out CW’s crimes, yet still encounters doubt over her version of the events, which includes the killing of her boyfriend. The film also follows Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), living in Bali and trying to juice his career as part of a right-wing-influencer duo with Ariana (Veronica Long), though his preferred medium involves masculine-focused livestreams, as opposed to the curated images that normally attract CW's interest.

Naud remains terrifically magnetic in the part, a role that appears especially tailor-made to her strengths. (She also designed CW's striking outfits.) Although the sequel’s focus leans heavily into CW — the first film seemed more balanced between her and Madison — it still functions as a story of rival investigators, with both women both use fake accounts, social media surveillance, and an apparently unlimited travel budget to chase or evade one another. Then again, maybe the vast resources isn’t necessary. Influencers have a knack for getting to explore luxurious locales at little cost, an ability which CW mirrors with her more overt scamming.

Resourceful Production and Visual Wanderlust

The filmmakers behind Influencers appear equally ingenious about finding stunning locations to film, though they were presumably more legitimate about it. The vast majority of the film seems to be filmed in real places, giving it a real-world weight that lingers even when many scenes involve a handful of actors of characters staring at computer or phone screens.

It’s the same principle that made the James Bond movies look so persistently lavish for decades: Indeed, explosive action and visual effects can show off a big budget, but just providing a kind of visual tour for the audience also seems inherently cinematic. This is particularly appropriate for a story so rooted in the coexisting surface-level allure and try-hard grind involved in producing jealousy-worthy online content.

All of the characters in Bali, like those staying in Thailand in the original, seem to have entry to unbelievably stylish contemporary villas; films exist about lifeguards which don't feature as much overhead swimming-pool footage. These individuals have to convincingly inhabit these luxurious, far-flung locations to highlight the uneasy irony of how frequently everyone — even the woman wreaking vengeance on the influencers’ narcissistic falseness — nevertheless devotes much time in the glow of their devices.

Balanced Depictions and Digital-Age Suspense

At the same time, the director has not crafted a rant targeting the emptiness of online fame. Though it is gratifying to watch CW manipulate different internet celebrities, and a sense reminiscent of Hitchcock of identification allows us to hope she doesn’t get caught, the filmmaker is relatively understanding of the key influencer figures. In the first movie, he keyed into the loneliness Madison experienced during supposedly envy-worthy vacations. In this film, Harder seems to trust that just observing Jacob at work will make it clear that he’s peddling false masculinity to other doofuses; he avoids turning into a caricature the character. He even grants Jacob a measure of dignity through depicting his genuine loyalty to his girlfriend; he is two-faced, but Ariana is a collaborator in his double standards, not a victim by it.

The other side of Harder’s even-keeled presentation is that it may occasionally seem that he is acknowledging elements of contemporary digital culture without deeply exploring them. This is especially true regarding how he introduces artificial intelligence into the story, a fascinating turn that lacks the psychosexual kick it deserves. The pluralized title for the film could offer fans of the first movie hope for a larger-scale escalation, and the film does eventually provide that, with an appropriately chaotic climax. However, initially, it resembles more a sleek Hitchcock thriller than an wild-eyed, technology-obsessed De Palma-style shocker. Influencers’ heavy use of actual places might also be what keeps it from coming across like utter horror. The world might be saturated with content-churning influencers, digital deception, and self-serving tourism, but the world itself is still here, for now.