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“Everything about this reeks like a cheap TV movie,” remarks a cynical podcaster during the chilling follow-up Influencers. At that point, he’s being manipulatively dismissive toward an interviewee with an outlandish story he previously said he trusted. Yet his description of the events in the movie isn’t wrong. On its face, two streaming movies chronicling a woman who worms her way into the lives of social media stars before killing them feels like the 21st-century equivalent of a lurid yet network-approved Movie of the Week. The surprising aspect regarding Influencers is how much better it is than plenty of the competition, regardless of screen size. It’s the kind of thriller capable of giving its peers a serious bout of FOMO.

Recapping 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, entices them to their doom, and covers up those deaths (at least temporarily) by taking control of their online accounts. The movie concludes (spoiler ahead) with CW stranded on a deserted island near the coast of Thailand, after her latest target, Madison (Emily Tennant), reverses their roles against her.

This lends 2025's Influencers a degree of ambiguity, when returning writer-director Kurtis David Harder picks up with CW happily living with her girlfriend Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. During a trip to celebrate their one-year anniversary, British influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) draws CW's attention and anger.

CW remarks to her partner that a person should try stranding a phone-addicted influencer in a place with no technology to see if they can make it. Are we witnessing an origin-story prequel? Did CW become extremist by seeing the special treatment afforded a single clout-chaser?

Shifting Perspectives and International Chases

The narrative viewpoint shifts several more times, eventually clarifying those introductory moments' chronological position. Harder catches up with Madison, who has been exonerated for carrying out CW’s crimes, but still faces suspicion over her version of what happened, which includes the murder of Madison’s boyfriend. We also follow Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), based in Bali and trying to boost his profile as part of a conservative-influencer power couple with Ariana (Veronica Long), though his chosen platform involves masculine-focused livestreams, as opposed to the Instagram photos that typically capture CW's interest.

Naud remains immensely captivating in the part, which seems especially tailor-made for her talents. (She even created CW's eye-catching wardrobe.) Although the follow-up's focus tips heavily toward CW — the original seemed more balanced between her and Madison — it still works as a story of rival amateur detectives, as Madison and CW employ fabricated profiles, social media surveillance, and a seemingly unlimited travel budget to chase or evade one another. Then again, maybe the vast resources aren't needed. Online personalities possess a knack for getting to explore posh places without paying much, an ability which CW mirrors through her more blatant scamming.

Resourceful Production and Visual Wanderlust

The filmmakers behind Influencers appear equally ingenious in locating stunning locations to visit, though they were presumably more legitimate in their methods. The vast majority of the film seems to be shot on location, providing it an authentic gravity that remains even as 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 appear so persistently lavish for decades: Yes, explosive action and visual effects can display large spending, but just providing a travelogue of sorts to viewers also feels inherently cinematic. It’s also especially fitting for a story so dependent on the coexisting surface-level allure and try-hard grind of creating envy-inducing digital content.

All of the characters visiting Bali, similar to those staying in Thailand in the original, appear to enjoy entry to impossibly chic modern bungalows; films exist about lifeguards that don’t show off as much aerial pool video. These individuals must believably occupy these lush, remote places to emphasize the uneasy irony of how often everyone — including the woman exacting revenge on the influencers’ self-centered phoniness — nonetheless spends plenty of time under the light of their devices.

Nuanced Portrayals and Digital-Age Suspense

Simultaneously, the director has not crafted a rant targeting the emptiness of the influencer industry. While it is gratifying to watch CW exploit different internet celebrities, and a Hitchcockian sense of alignment lets us to wish she doesn’t get caught, the filmmaker is somewhat understanding of the major influencer characters. In the first movie, he keyed into the loneliness Madison experienced while on supposedly dream getaways. Here, Harder seems to trust that merely watching Jacob at work will reveal that he’s peddling snake-oil masculinity to other doofuses; he resists caricaturing the character further. He even grants Jacob a degree of respect by showing his genuine loyalty to his partner; he is two-faced, but Ariana is a partner in his hypocrisy, not someone exploited of it.

The other side of Harder’s even-keeled presentation is that it can sometimes appear as if he is acknowledging bits of contemporary digital culture without deeply exploring them. This is especially true regarding how he introduces artificial intelligence into the story, a fascinating turn which misses the psychological edge it deserves. The retitled sequel for the film might give fans of the first movie hope for an Aliens-style escalation, and the movie ultimately delivers exactly that, with an appropriately wild final act. But before that, it’s more like a polished Hitchcock thriller than a frenzied, technology-obsessed De Palma-style shocker. Influencers’ extensive use of real-world locations might also be what keeps it from coming across like pure nightmare fuel. Our society may be overrun with content-churning influencers, online fraud, and exploitative travel, but reality itself is still here, at least for now.