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“Everything about this smells like a bad made-for-TV,” states an opportunistic podcaster during the chilling follow-up Influencers. In the moment, his tone is dismissive in a calculated way of a guest whose bizarre tale he previously claimed he believed. But his description of the events in the movie isn’t wrong. Superficially, two streaming movies chronicling a young woman who insinuates herself into the lives of online influencers and then murders them feels like the 21st-century equivalent of a tawdry but cable-ready Movie of the Week. The wild thing regarding Influencers is just how superior it proves to be than plenty of its competition, irrespective of where you watch it. It’s the kind of thriller capable of giving other movies a serious bout of FOMO.

Recapping the Original and Establishing the Scene

The 2022 film Influencer tracks the enigmatic CW (Cassandra Naud) as she methodically selects traveling alone social media targets, lures them to their doom, and conceals those deaths (for a time) by seizing control of their online accounts. The film concludes (spoiler ahead) with CW stranded on an uninhabited island off the coast of Thailand, after her most recent mark, Madison (Emily Tennant), reverses their roles against her.

This lends the 2025 Influencers some early mystery, as returning filmmaker Kurtis David Harder resumes with CW happily living with her girlfriend Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. On a journey marking the couple’s one-year anniversary, UK-based influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) catches CW’s eye and anger.

CW remarks to Diane that a person should try leaving a phone-addicted online personality somewhere with no technology to see whether they can make it. Is this a backstory prequel? Did CW become extremist after witnessing the preferential treatment given to a single fame-seeker?

Shifting Perspectives and International Chases

The narrative viewpoint changes multiple times, eventually clarifying those introductory moments' chronological position. The story revisits Madison, who has been exonerated for committing CW’s crimes, but still faces suspicion regarding her version of what happened, including the murder of Madison’s boyfriend. We also follow Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), living in Bali and trying to juice his career as half of a conservative-influencer duo alongside Ariana (Veronica Long), although his chosen platform involves masculine-focused livestreams, as opposed to the curated images that typically attract CW’s attention.

Naud remains terrifically magnetic in the part, a role that appears especially custom-fit for her talents. (She even created CW's striking outfits.) Although the sequel’s focus leans heavily into CW — the original seemed more balanced between her and Madison — it still works as a story of rival amateur detectives, with both women both use fake accounts, Insta-stalking, and an apparently unlimited travel budget to chase and/or escape one another. Of course, perhaps the unlimited budget aren't needed. Influencers have a knack for gaining access to luxurious locales at little cost, an ability that CW echoes with her more overt scheming.

Ingenious Filmmaking and Visual Wanderlust

The creative team for Influencers appear equally ingenious in locating stunning locations to film, though they were likely less nefarious in their methods. Most of the film seems to be shot on location, giving it a real-world weight that remains even when many scenes consist of a handful of actors of characters staring at digital devices.

It’s the same principle which allowed the James Bond movies appear so consistently opulent for decades: Yes, big action and special effects can display a big budget, however simply offering a travelogue of sorts to viewers also feels deeply filmic. It’s also especially fitting for a narrative so rooted in the coexisting surface-level allure and try-hard grind of creating envy-inducing online content.

Every character in Bali, like 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 as much aerial pool footage. These individuals have to convincingly inhabit these luxurious, remote places to emphasize the uncomfortable paradox of how often everyone — even the woman exacting revenge upon the online stars' self-centered phoniness — nonetheless devotes much time in the glow of their screens.

Balanced Depictions and Tech-Savvy Tension

At the same time, the director has not crafted a screed against the emptiness of the influencer industry. While it can be gratifying to see 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 sympathetic to the key influencer figures. Previously, he keyed into the isolation Madison experienced while on supposedly envy-worthy vacations. In this film, the director appears confident that merely watching Jacob at work will make it clear that he is selling false masculinity to other doofuses; he avoids turning into a caricature the character. He even gives Jacob a degree of respect through depicting his genuine loyalty to his partner; he is two-faced, but Ariana is a partner in his double standards, not a victim of it.

The other side of Harder’s even-keeled presentation means it may occasionally seem as if he’s nodding at elements of contemporary digital culture without investigating them. This is particularly evident regarding how he brings AI into the plot, an intriguing development that lacks the psychosexual kick it deserves. The pluralized title for the film might give fans of the first movie hope for an Aliens-style escalation, and the movie ultimately delivers that, with an appropriately chaotic climax. However, initially, it’s more like a polished Hitchcock thriller than an wild-eyed, technology-obsessed Brian De Palma thriller. Influencers’ heavy use of actual places may also be what keeps it from seeming like utter horror. The world may be overrun with content-churning influencers, digital deception, and exploitative travel, but reality itself remains present, for now.