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“The entire situation reeks like a cheap TV movie,” observes a cynical commentator midway through the chilling follow-up Influencers. In the moment, he’s being dismissive in a calculated way of a guest with an outlandish story he previously claimed he believed. Yet his description of what’s happening in the movie isn’t wrong. On its face, a pair of streaming movies about a woman who insinuates herself into the worlds of online influencers before killing them feels like a modern-day version of a lurid yet network-approved weekly TV movie. The surprising aspect about Influencers is how much better it is compared to much of its competition, irrespective of where you watch it. It’s the kind of suspense film that should give other movies a bad case of FOMO.

Recapping the Original and Establishing the Scene

The 2022 film Influencer tracks the enigmatic CW (Cassandra Naud) as she quietly chooses solo-traveling social media targets, lures them to their doom, and covers up 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 near the coast of Thailand, following her most recent mark, Madison (Emily Tennant), reverses their roles against her.

This provides 2025's Influencers some early ambiguity, as returning filmmaker Kurtis David Harder resumes with the character CW happily living alongside her partner Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. During a trip to celebrate their first anniversary, UK-based influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) draws CW’s eye and anger.

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. Is this a backstory prequel? Did CW become extremist by seeing the special treatment afforded a single clout-chaser?

Shifting Perspectives and Global Pursuits

The narrative viewpoint shifts several more times, eventually clarifying those early scenes’ place in the timeline. The story revisits Madison, now exonerated for carrying out CW’s crimes, yet still encounters doubt regarding her recounting of the events, including the murder of Madison’s boyfriend. The film also follows Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), based in Bali and trying to boost his profile as half of a conservative-influencer duo with Ariana (Veronica Long), although his chosen platform is bro-heavy streams, rather than the curated images that normally attract CW's interest.

Naud remains immensely captivating in her role, a role that appears especially custom-fit to her strengths. (She even created CW's eye-catching outfits.) Although the follow-up's focus leans heavily into CW — the first film seemed more balanced between her and Madison — it still functions as a tale of dueling investigators, as Madison and CW both use fabricated profiles, social media surveillance, and a seemingly unlimited travel budget to chase and/or escape each other. Then again, perhaps the vast resources aren't needed. Influencers have a knack for getting to explore posh places at little cost, a skill that CW echoes through her more blatant scheming.

Resourceful Production and Visual Wanderlust

The creative team for Influencers appear equally ingenious in locating beautiful places to film, though they were likely more legitimate about it. The vast majority of the film appears to be shot on location, giving it an authentic gravity that remains even when many scenes involve a handful of actors of people looking at digital devices.

It’s the same principle which allowed the James Bond movies appear so consistently opulent for decades: Yes, explosive action and visual effects can show off a big budget, but simply offering a travelogue of sorts to viewers also seems inherently cinematic. It’s also especially fitting for a narrative so dependent on the simultaneous superficial glamour and try-hard grind of creating jealousy-worthy digital content.

All of the characters visiting Bali, like those staying in Thailand in the original, seem to have entry to impossibly chic contemporary villas; films exist about lifeguards which don't feature this much aerial pool video. These individuals have to convincingly inhabit these lush, far-flung locations to highlight the uncomfortable paradox of how frequently everyone — even the woman wreaking vengeance upon the online stars' self-centered phoniness — nonetheless devotes much time under the light of their devices.

Balanced Depictions and Tech-Savvy Tension

Simultaneously, Harder hasn’t authored a rant targeting the emptiness of the influencer industry. While it can be gratifying to see CW manipulate various online personalities, and a sense reminiscent of Hitchcock of identification lets us to hope she doesn’t get caught, the filmmaker is relatively sympathetic to the major influencer characters. In the first movie, he tapped into the loneliness Madison experienced during ostensibly dream getaways. In this film, the director appears confident that just observing Jacob in action will make it clear that he is selling snake-oil masculinity to other doofuses; he resists turning into a caricature the character further. He even grants Jacob a measure of dignity by showing his genuine loyalty to his partner; he is two-faced, yet Ariana is a partner in his hypocrisy, not a victim of it.

The other side of Harder’s even-keeled presentation means it can sometimes appear as if he’s nodding at bits of modern online life without investigating them. This is especially true regarding how he introduces artificial intelligence into the plot, an intriguing development that lacks the psychosexual kick it deserves. The pluralized title for the film could offer devotees of the original hope for an Aliens-style ante-upping, and the movie does eventually provide that, with an appropriately wild final act. However, initially, it’s more like a polished Hitchcock thriller than a frenzied, tech-addled De Palma-style shocker. Influencers’ extensive use of actual places might also be what prevents it from coming across like utter horror. The world may be overrun with content-churning influencers, digital deception, and self-serving tourism, but the world itself is still here, for now.