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“This whole affair reeks of a bad TV movie,” remarks an opportunistic podcaster during the chilling follow-up Influencers. At that point, he’s being dismissive in a calculated way toward an interviewee with an outlandish story he previously claimed he believed. But his description of what’s happening in the movie isn't inaccurate. On its face, two films on demand about a woman who worms her way into the lives of social media stars before killing them feels like the 21st-century equivalent of a tawdry but cable-ready Movie of the Week. The wild thing regarding Influencers is how much better it proves to be than plenty of its competition, regardless of screen size. It’s the kind of thriller capable of giving its peers a serious bout of FOMO.

Revisiting the First Film and Setting the Stage

The 2022 film Influencer tracks the mysterious CW (Cassandra Naud) while she quietly chooses solo-traveling influencer targets, entices them to their deaths, and conceals those murders (for a time) by seizing control of their socials. The movie leaves off (spoiler ahead) with CW stranded on a deserted 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 ambiguity, as returning filmmaker Kurtis David Harder resumes with 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) catches CW’s eye and ire.

CW comments to her partner that someone should try stranding a phone-addicted influencer in a place without any devices to see if they can survive. Are we witnessing an origin-story prequel? Did CW become extremist by seeing the preferential treatment afforded one fame-seeker?

Shifting Perspectives and Global Pursuits

The story’s perspective changes multiple times, ultimately revealing those early scenes’ chronological position. Harder catches up with Madison, who has been cleared of carrying out CW's offenses, but still faces doubt over her recounting of what happened, which includes the murder of her boyfriend. The film also follows Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), based in Bali and trying to juice his career as half of a conservative-influencer duo with Ariana (Veronica Long), though his chosen platform is bro-heavy streams, as opposed to the curated images that typically attract CW's interest.

Naud remains terrifically magnetic in her role, which seems especially custom-fit to her strengths. (She even created CW's eye-catching wardrobe.) Although the sequel’s screentime balance tips heavily toward CW — the first film felt more equally divided between her and Madison — it still works as a tale of rival amateur detectives, with both women employ fake accounts, Insta-stalking, and an apparently limitless travel fund to pursue or evade one another. Of course, perhaps the unlimited budget isn’t necessary. Online personalities possess a talent for getting to explore posh places without paying much, an ability which CW mirrors with her more overt scheming.

Resourceful Production and Cinematic Travelogue

The filmmakers behind Influencers appear equally resourceful about finding beautiful places to visit, although they were presumably more legitimate about it. Most of the film seems to be shot on location, giving it a real-world weight that remains even as many scenes consist of a handful of actors of people looking at computer or phone screens.

It’s the same principle that made the James Bond movies appear so consistently opulent over the years: Yes, explosive action and visual effects can display a big budget, but just providing a travelogue of sorts for the audience also feels inherently cinematic. It’s also especially fitting for a narrative so dependent on the simultaneous surface-level allure and try-hard grind involved in producing envy-inducing digital content.

Every character visiting Bali, similar to those who were in Thailand in the original, appear to enjoy entry to impossibly chic contemporary villas; there are movies about lifeguards that don’t show off as much overhead swimming-pool video. The characters have to convincingly inhabit these luxurious, remote places to highlight the uncomfortable paradox of how often each person — including the woman exacting revenge on the influencers’ self-centered phoniness — nonetheless devotes much time in the glow of their screens.

Nuanced Portrayals and Digital-Age Suspense

At the same time, Harder hasn’t authored a rant targeting the emptiness of online fame. While it can be gratifying to see CW manipulate different internet celebrities, and a sense reminiscent of Hitchcock of alignment allows us to wish she doesn’t get caught, Harder is somewhat understanding of the major influencer characters. In the first movie, he keyed into the isolation Madison felt during supposedly envy-worthy vacations. In this film, the director appears confident that merely watching Jacob at work will make it clear that he is selling snake-oil masculinity to other gullible men; he resists caricaturing the character further. He even grants Jacob a degree of respect through depicting his genuine loyalty to his partner; he’s a hypocrite, yet Ariana is a collaborator in his hypocrisy, not a victim of it.

The other side of this balanced approach is that it can sometimes appear as if he’s nodding at bits of modern online life without deeply exploring them. This is particularly evident regarding how he brings AI into the story, an intriguing development that lacks the psychological edge it deserves. The retitled sequel for the film could offer devotees of the original expectations of an Aliens-style ante-upping, and the movie ultimately delivers exactly that, with a suitably chaotic climax. But before that, it resembles more a polished Alfred Hitchcock movie than an frenzied, tech-addled De Palma-style shocker. Influencers’ heavy use of actual places may also be what prevents it from seeming like pure nightmare fuel. The world may be overrun with content-churning influencers, online fraud, and self-serving tourism, but reality itself remains present, for now.