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“The entire situation reeks like a cheap TV movie,” observes an opportunistic podcaster during the chilling follow-up Influencers. In the moment, he’s being dismissive in a calculated way of a guest whose bizarre tale he once said he trusted. But his assessment of the events in the movie isn't inaccurate. On its face, a pair of streaming movies chronicling a young woman who worms her way into the lives of social media stars and then murders them feels like the 21st-century equivalent of a tawdry but network-approved Movie of the Week. The surprising aspect regarding Influencers remains just how superior it proves to be than plenty of its competition, regardless of screen size. It is precisely the thriller capable of giving other movies a bad case of FOMO.

Revisiting the Original and Setting the Stage

The 2022 film Influencer follows the mysterious CW (Cassandra Naud) while she quietly chooses solo-traveling influencer targets, entices them to their doom, and covers up those murders (at least temporarily) by seizing control of their online accounts. The movie concludes (spoiler ahead) with CW marooned on an uninhabited island near the coast of Thailand, after her most recent mark, Madison (Emily Tennant), reverses their roles on her.

This lends the 2025 Influencers a degree of ambiguity, when returning writer-director Kurtis David Harder resumes with the character CW contentedly residing with her girlfriend Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. On a journey marking their one-year anniversary, UK-based influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) catches CW’s eye and ire.

CW remarks to Diane that a person ought to attempt stranding a phone-addicted influencer in a place with no technology to see if they can survive. Are we witnessing an origin-story prequel? Was CW radicalized after witnessing the preferential treatment given to a single fame-seeker?

Shifting Perspectives and Global Pursuits

The story’s perspective changes multiple times, ultimately revealing those introductory moments' place in the timeline. The story revisits Madison, who has been exonerated for committing CW's offenses, but still faces suspicion over her version of the events, including the murder of Madison’s boyfriend. We also follow 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 preferred medium involves masculine-focused livestreams, as opposed to the curated images that normally attract CW’s attention.

Naud remains terrifically magnetic in the part, a role that appears especially tailor-made to her strengths. (She also designed CW's striking wardrobe.) While the follow-up's screentime balance leans heavily into CW — the first film seemed more balanced between the two women — it still functions as a tale of rival amateur detectives, with both women employ fake accounts, social media surveillance, and an apparently unlimited travel budget to pursue or evade each other. Of course, maybe the unlimited budget isn’t necessary. Influencers have a knack for getting to explore posh places at little cost, a skill which CW mirrors with her more overt scheming.

Resourceful Production and Visual Wanderlust

The creative team for Influencers appear equally ingenious in locating beautiful places to visit, though they were likely less nefarious about it. The vast majority of the movie appears to be filmed in real places, providing it a real-world weight that remains even as many scenes consist of a handful of actors of characters looking at digital devices.

It follows the same logic which allowed the Bond franchise look so persistently lavish for decades: Indeed, big action and visual effects can show off a big budget, but just providing a travelogue of sorts to viewers also seems deeply filmic. This is particularly appropriate for a story so rooted in the simultaneous surface-level allure and try-hard grind involved in producing jealousy-worthy online content.

All of the characters visiting Bali, like those staying in Thailand in the original, appear to enjoy entry to unbelievably stylish contemporary villas; there are movies about lifeguards which don't feature as much aerial pool video. These individuals must believably occupy these lush, far-flung locations to highlight the uncomfortable paradox of how frequently each person — including the woman exacting revenge upon the online stars' self-centered phoniness — nevertheless devotes much time under the light of their devices.

Balanced Depictions and Digital-Age Suspense

At the same time, the director has not crafted a screed against the emptiness of online fame. While it can be satisfying to watch CW exploit various online personalities, and a sense reminiscent of Hitchcock of alignment lets us to wish 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 ostensibly envy-worthy vacations. Here, the director appears confident that merely watching Jacob in action will make it clear that he is selling false masculinity to other gullible men; he resists turning into a caricature the character. He even gives Jacob a measure of dignity by showing his true devotion to his girlfriend; he’s a hypocrite, but Ariana is a partner in his hypocrisy, not someone exploited of it.

The flip side of this balanced approach means it can sometimes appear that he is acknowledging elements of modern online life without investigating them further. This is particularly evident of the way he brings AI into the story, a fascinating turn which misses the psychological edge it should have. The retitled sequel for the film might give devotees of the original expectations of a larger-scale escalation, and the movie does eventually provide exactly that, with a suitably wild final act. But before that, it resembles more a polished Alfred Hitchcock movie than an frenzied, tech-addled De Palma-style shocker. Influencers’ extensive use of actual places might also be what keeps it from coming across like utter horror. The world might be saturated with always-online creators, digital deception, and self-serving tourism, but the world itself is still here, for now.