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“Everything about this reeks like a bad made-for-TV,” observes an opportunistic podcaster midway through the chilling follow-up Influencers. At that point, his tone is dismissive in a calculated way toward an interviewee with an outlandish story he once claimed he believed. Yet his assessment of the events on screen isn't inaccurate. Superficially, a pair of films on demand chronicling a young woman who worms her way into the lives of social media stars and then murders them seems like a modern-day version of a lurid but cable-ready Movie of the Week. The wild thing regarding Influencers is just how superior it is than plenty of its competition, irrespective of screen size. It is precisely the thriller that should give other movies a serious bout of FOMO.

Revisiting the Original and Establishing the Scene

2022’s Influencer follows the enigmatic CW (Cassandra Naud) as she methodically selects solo-traveling influencer targets, entices them to their doom, and conceals those deaths (at least temporarily) by taking control of their online accounts. The film leaves off (spoiler ahead) with CW marooned on a deserted island near the coast of Thailand, following her latest target, Madison (Emily Tennant), turns the tables against her.

This lends 2025's Influencers some early ambiguity, as returning writer-director Kurtis David Harder picks up with CW contentedly residing alongside her partner Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. On a journey to celebrate their first anniversary, UK-based influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) draws CW’s eye and anger.

CW comments to her partner that a person should try leaving a phone-addicted influencer somewhere without any devices to see whether they can survive. Are we witnessing a backstory prequel? Did CW become extremist after witnessing the special treatment given to a single fame-seeker?

Shifting Perspectives and International Chases

The story’s perspective shifts several more times, eventually clarifying those introductory moments' place in the timeline. The story revisits Madison, who has been exonerated for committing CW's offenses, yet still encounters suspicion over her recounting of what happened, which includes the murder 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 alongside Ariana (Veronica Long), though his chosen platform is bro-heavy streams, as opposed to the curated images that typically attract CW’s attention.

Naud remains immensely captivating in her role, a role that appears particularly custom-fit to her strengths. (She even created CW's striking wardrobe.) Although the follow-up's screentime balance tips heavily toward CW — the original felt more equally divided between her and Madison — it still works as a story of dueling amateur detectives, as Madison and CW both use fabricated profiles, Insta-stalking, and an apparently unlimited travel budget to pursue and/or escape one another. Of course, maybe the vast resources isn’t necessary. Online personalities possess a talent for getting to explore posh places without paying much, an ability which CW mirrors with her more overt scheming.

Ingenious Filmmaking and Cinematic Travelogue

The creative team for Influencers seem similarly ingenious in locating beautiful places to film, although they were presumably more legitimate about it. The vast majority of the film seems to be shot on location, giving it an authentic gravity that lingers even as many scenes involve a handful of actors of people looking at computer or phone screens.

It follows the same logic which allowed the Bond franchise appear so persistently lavish over the years: Yes, big action and visual effects can display a big budget, however simply offering a travelogue of sorts for the audience also seems deeply filmic. This is particularly appropriate for a narrative so dependent on the coexisting surface-level allure and try-hard grind involved in producing jealousy-worthy digital content.

Every character visiting Bali, like those staying in Thailand in the first film, seem to have entry to impossibly chic contemporary villas; there are movies about lifeguards which don't feature this much overhead swimming-pool footage. The characters must believably occupy these luxurious, far-flung locations to emphasize the uncomfortable paradox of how often everyone — including the woman exacting revenge on the influencers’ narcissistic falseness — nonetheless spends plenty of time in the glow of their devices.

Balanced Depictions and Tech-Savvy Tension

At the same time, the director has not crafted a screed against the vacuousness of the influencer industry. Though it is satisfying to watch CW exploit various online personalities, and a Hitchcockian sense of alignment allows us to wish she doesn’t get caught, the filmmaker is somewhat sympathetic to the major influencer characters. Previously, he tapped into the loneliness Madison felt during supposedly dream getaways. In this film, Harder seems to trust that just observing Jacob in action will reveal that he’s peddling snake-oil masculinity to other gullible men; he resists turning into a caricature the character. He even grants Jacob a degree of respect through depicting his genuine loyalty to his partner; he is two-faced, yet Ariana is a partner in his double standards, not someone exploited by it.

The other side of this balanced approach is that it may occasionally seem as if he is acknowledging bits of modern online life without investigating them. This is particularly evident regarding how he introduces artificial intelligence into the plot, a fascinating turn which misses the psychological edge it should have. The pluralized title for the film could offer fans of the first movie expectations of a larger-scale ante-upping, and the film does eventually provide exactly that, with a suitably chaotic climax. However, initially, it’s more like a sleek Hitchcock thriller than an wild-eyed, tech-addled Brian De Palma thriller. Influencers’ heavy use of actual places might also be what prevents it from coming across like pure nightmare fuel. The world might be saturated with content-churning influencers, online fraud, and exploitative travel, but the world itself is still here, for now.