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“The entire situation smells like a bad made-for-TV,” states a cynical podcaster during the chilling follow-up Influencers. In the moment, his tone is dismissive in a calculated way of a guest whose outlandish story he once claimed he believed. But his assessment of what’s happening on screen isn’t wrong. Superficially, two films on demand about a woman who worms her way into the worlds of online influencers and then murders them feels like a modern-day version of a lurid yet cable-ready weekly TV movie. The surprising aspect about Influencers remains just how superior it is than plenty of the competition, regardless of screen size. It is precisely the thriller that should give other movies a bad case of FOMO.

Revisiting the Original and Setting the Stage

The 2022 film Influencer tracks the mysterious CW (Cassandra Naud) as she methodically selects traveling alone influencer targets, entices them to their deaths, and conceals those murders (at least temporarily) by seizing control of their online accounts. The movie leaves off (spoiler ahead) with CW stranded on an uninhabited island off the coast of Thailand, after her latest target, Madison (Emily Tennant), turns the tables against her.

This provides 2025's Influencers a degree of mystery, as returning filmmaker the director picks up with CW contentedly residing alongside her partner Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. During a trip to celebrate the couple’s first anniversary, UK-based influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) catches CW's attention and ire.

CW comments to her partner that a person should try stranding a phone-addicted influencer somewhere with no technology to see whether they can survive. Is this an origin-story prequel? Did CW become extremist after witnessing the special treatment afforded a single clout-chaser?

Evolving Viewpoints and Global Pursuits

The story’s perspective shifts several more times, eventually clarifying those introductory moments' chronological position. The story revisits Madison, who has been exonerated for carrying out CW's offenses, but still faces doubt regarding her version of the events, including 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 involves masculine-focused livestreams, rather than the curated images that typically capture CW’s attention.

Naud remains terrifically magnetic in the part, which seems particularly custom-fit to her strengths. (She even created CW's eye-catching wardrobe.) Although the sequel’s focus tips heavily toward CW — the original seemed more balanced between the two women — it still functions as a tale of rival amateur detectives, with both women employ fake accounts, Insta-stalking, and an apparently unlimited travel budget to pursue or evade one another. Of course, maybe the vast resources aren't needed. Online personalities possess a talent for gaining access to luxurious locales at little cost, a skill that CW echoes through her more blatant scamming.

Ingenious Filmmaking and Visual Wanderlust

The filmmakers behind Influencers seem similarly resourceful 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 remains even when numerous sequences involve a relatively small cast of characters staring at computer or phone screens.

It follows the same logic that made the Bond franchise look so consistently opulent over the years: Yes, explosive action and visual effects can display a big budget, however simply offering a kind of visual tour for the audience also seems deeply filmic. This is especially fitting for a narrative so rooted in the simultaneous surface-level allure and desperate hustle involved in producing jealousy-worthy digital content.

All of the characters visiting Bali, similar to those who were in Thailand in the first film, appear to enjoy access to unbelievably stylish contemporary villas; films exist concerning beach rescuers that don’t show off this much aerial pool footage. These individuals must believably inhabit these luxurious, far-flung locations to highlight the uneasy irony of how frequently each person — including the woman exacting revenge on the influencers’ narcissistic falseness — nonetheless spends plenty of time in the glow of their screens.

Balanced Depictions and Digital-Age Suspense

At the same time, Harder hasn’t authored a rant against the vacuousness of the influencer industry. Though it is gratifying to see CW exploit various online personalities, and a Hitchcockian sense of identification allows us to wish she doesn’t get caught, Harder is relatively sympathetic to the major influencer characters. Previously, he tapped into the isolation Madison felt during supposedly dream getaways. 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 resists turning into a caricature the character further. He even grants Jacob a degree of respect by showing his true devotion to his girlfriend; he is two-faced, yet Ariana is a collaborator in his double standards, not a victim of it.

The other side of this balanced approach is that it may occasionally seem that he’s nodding at bits of contemporary digital culture without deeply exploring them. This is particularly evident of the way he introduces artificial intelligence into the plot, an intriguing development which misses the psychosexual kick it should have. The retitled sequel of Influencers could offer fans of the first movie expectations of a larger-scale escalation, and the film ultimately delivers that, with a suitably wild final act. However, initially, it resembles more a polished Hitchcock thriller than a wild-eyed, technology-obsessed De Palma-style shocker. Influencers’ extensive use of actual places may also be what prevents it from seeming like utter horror. The world might be saturated with always-online creators, digital deception, and exploitative travel, but reality itself is still here, for now.