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“This whole affair stinks of a bad TV movie,” remarks an opportunistic commentator midway through the chilling follow-up Influencers. At that point, he’s being manipulatively dismissive toward an interviewee with an bizarre tale he once said he trusted. Yet his assessment of what’s happening in the movie isn't inaccurate. Superficially, a pair of films on demand chronicling a young woman who insinuates herself into the worlds of online influencers before killing them seems like the 21st-century equivalent of a lurid yet network-approved weekly TV movie. The wild thing regarding Influencers remains how much better it proves to be than plenty of its competition, irrespective of screen size. It’s the kind of thriller that should give other movies a bad case of FOMO.

Revisiting the Original and Establishing the Scene

The 2022 film Influencer tracks the mysterious CW (Cassandra Naud) as she quietly chooses traveling alone influencer targets, entices them to their doom, and conceals those murders (for a time) by seizing 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), turns the tables on her.

This provides the 2025 Influencers some early mystery, when returning filmmaker the director resumes with the character CW happily living alongside her partner Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. On a journey marking the couple’s first anniversary, British influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) draws CW’s eye and ire.

CW comments to Diane that someone ought to attempt stranding a device-obsessed online personality in a place with no technology to see whether they can make it. Are we witnessing an origin-story prequel? Did CW become extremist by seeing the special treatment afforded one clout-chaser?

Shifting Perspectives and Global Pursuits

The story’s perspective changes multiple times, ultimately revealing those introductory moments' chronological position. The story revisits Madison, now cleared of committing CW’s crimes, yet still encounters doubt over her version 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 power couple alongside Ariana (Veronica Long), although his chosen platform is bro-heavy streams, rather than the Instagram photos that typically capture CW’s attention.

Naud remains immensely captivating in the part, which seems especially tailor-made to her strengths. (She also designed CW's striking outfits.) While the follow-up's focus tips heavily toward CW — the first film felt more equally divided between her and Madison — it still works as a story of dueling amateur detectives, as Madison and CW employ fabricated profiles, social media surveillance, and an apparently limitless travel fund to pursue or evade one another. Then again, maybe the unlimited budget isn’t necessary. Influencers have a talent for getting to explore luxurious locales without paying much, a skill which CW mirrors with her more overt scheming.

Ingenious Filmmaking and Visual Wanderlust

The filmmakers behind Influencers appear equally ingenious about finding stunning locations to film, though they were likely more legitimate about it. Most of the movie appears to be filmed in real places, giving it a real-world weight that remains even when numerous sequences involve a handful of actors of characters looking at computer or phone screens.

It follows the same logic that made the Bond franchise look so persistently lavish over the years: Indeed, explosive action and special effects can show off large spending, however just providing a kind of visual tour for the audience also seems inherently cinematic. This is especially fitting for a story so rooted in the simultaneous superficial glamour and try-hard grind of creating jealousy-worthy digital content.

All of the characters visiting Bali, similar to those staying in Thailand in the first film, seem to have access to unbelievably stylish contemporary villas; films exist about lifeguards which don't feature as much overhead swimming-pool video. These individuals must believably inhabit these luxurious, remote places to highlight the uncomfortable paradox of how frequently each person — including the woman exacting revenge on the influencers’ self-centered phoniness — nevertheless 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 rant targeting the vacuousness of the influencer industry. While it is satisfying to watch CW exploit various online personalities, and a Hitchcockian sense of identification allows us to hope she doesn’t get caught, Harder is somewhat sympathetic to the major influencer characters. In the first movie, he keyed into the isolation Madison felt while on supposedly envy-worthy vacations. Here, the director appears confident that merely watching Jacob in action will make it clear that he is selling snake-oil masculinity to other gullible men; he avoids turning into a caricature the character. He even grants Jacob a degree of respect by showing his true devotion to his partner; he’s a hypocrite, but Ariana is a collaborator in his hypocrisy, not someone exploited of it.

The flip side of Harder’s even-keeled presentation is that it may occasionally seem that he’s nodding at bits of modern online life without deeply exploring them further. This is especially true of the way he introduces artificial intelligence into the story, an intriguing development which misses the psychosexual kick it deserves. The retitled sequel for the film could offer fans of the first movie hope for a larger-scale escalation, and the movie does eventually provide that, with a suitably wild final act. But before that, it resembles more a polished Alfred Hitchcock movie than an frenzied, technology-obsessed De Palma-style shocker. Influencers’ heavy use of actual places may also be what prevents it from seeming like utter horror. Our society might be saturated with content-churning influencers, digital deception, and self-serving tourism, but reality itself is still here, for now.