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“The entire situation smells like a cheap made-for-TV,” observes an opportunistic commentator midway through the chilling follow-up Influencers. In the moment, he’s being dismissive in a calculated way toward an interviewee with an outlandish story he previously said he trusted. Yet his assessment of what’s happening in the movie isn't inaccurate. On its face, a pair of films on demand about a young woman who insinuates herself into the lives of online influencers and then murders them feels like a modern-day version of a lurid but cable-ready weekly TV movie. The wild thing regarding Influencers is how much better it is compared to much of its competition, regardless of screen size. It is precisely the thriller that should give its peers a bad case of FOMO.

Revisiting the Original and Setting the Stage

The 2022 film Influencer follows the enigmatic CW (Cassandra Naud) as she quietly chooses solo-traveling social media targets, lures them to their doom, and conceals those murders (at least temporarily) by taking control of their online accounts. The movie concludes (spoiler ahead) with CW marooned on a deserted island off the coast of Thailand, after her most recent mark, Madison (Emily Tennant), reverses their roles on her.

This provides 2025's Influencers a degree of ambiguity, as returning filmmaker Kurtis David Harder picks up with CW happily living alongside her partner Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. During a trip to celebrate their one-year anniversary, UK-based influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) catches CW's attention and anger.

CW remarks to her partner that someone should try stranding a phone-addicted online personality in a place with no technology and see if they can survive. Is this an origin-story prequel? Did CW become extremist by seeing the preferential treatment afforded one clout-chaser?

Evolving Viewpoints and Global Pursuits

The narrative viewpoint changes multiple times, eventually clarifying those introductory moments' chronological position. The story revisits Madison, now cleared of carrying out CW’s crimes, yet still encounters doubt regarding her version of the events, including the killing of Madison’s boyfriend. We also follow Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), based in Bali and trying to juice his career as half of a conservative-influencer power couple alongside Ariana (Veronica Long), although his chosen platform involves masculine-focused livestreams, as opposed to the curated images that normally capture CW's interest.

The actor continues to be terrifically magnetic in her role, which seems especially tailor-made to her strengths. (She also designed CW's striking wardrobe.) While the sequel’s screentime balance leans heavily into CW — the first film seemed more balanced between the two women — it still works as a story of rival investigators, as Madison and CW both use fake accounts, Insta-stalking, and a seemingly unlimited travel budget to pursue and/or escape one another. Of course, perhaps the unlimited budget isn’t necessary. Online personalities possess a talent for getting to explore posh places at little cost, an ability that CW echoes with her more overt scamming.

Ingenious Filmmaking and Visual Wanderlust

The creative team for Influencers appear equally ingenious in locating beautiful places to film, although they were likely less nefarious about it. The vast majority of the movie appears to be filmed in real places, giving it a real-world weight that lingers even as many scenes consist of a handful of actors of people looking at computer or phone screens.

It’s the same principle which allowed the Bond franchise look so consistently opulent for decades: Yes, explosive action and special effects can display large spending, however simply offering a travelogue of sorts to viewers also seems deeply filmic. It’s also especially fitting for a story so rooted in the coexisting surface-level allure and try-hard grind of creating jealousy-worthy digital content.

All of the characters in Bali, like those who were in Thailand in the original, appear to enjoy entry to impossibly chic modern bungalows; films exist about lifeguards which don't feature this much aerial pool video. The characters must believably occupy these lush, remote places to emphasize the uneasy irony of how often each person — including the woman exacting revenge on the influencers’ narcissistic falseness — nevertheless spends plenty of time in the glow of their screens.

Balanced Depictions and Tech-Savvy Tension

Simultaneously, the director has not crafted a rant against the vacuousness of online fame. Though it can be gratifying to see CW exploit different internet celebrities, and a Hitchcockian sense of identification lets us to wish she doesn’t get caught, the filmmaker is somewhat understanding of the major influencer characters. Previously, he keyed into the loneliness Madison felt during ostensibly dream getaways. Here, the director appears confident that merely watching Jacob at work will reveal that he is selling false masculinity to other gullible men; he avoids caricaturing the character further. He even grants Jacob a measure of dignity by showing his true devotion to his girlfriend; he is two-faced, but Ariana is a partner in his double standards, not someone exploited by it.

The flip side of this balanced approach is that it may occasionally seem as if he’s nodding at elements of modern online life without deeply exploring them further. This is particularly evident regarding how he brings AI into the plot, an intriguing development that lacks the psychological edge it deserves. The retitled sequel of Influencers could offer fans of the first movie expectations of a larger-scale escalation, and the film ultimately delivers exactly that, with a suitably chaotic climax. However, initially, it’s more like a sleek Hitchcock thriller than an frenzied, tech-addled Brian De Palma thriller. Influencers’ extensive use of actual places may also be what keeps it from coming across like pure nightmare fuel. Our society may be overrun with always-online creators, online fraud, and self-serving tourism, but reality itself is still here, at least for now.