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“Everything about this reeks of a bad TV movie,” observes an opportunistic commentator during the chilling follow-up Influencers. In the moment, his tone is manipulatively dismissive of a guest whose bizarre tale he previously said he trusted. Yet his assessment of the events on screen isn’t wrong. Superficially, two films on demand chronicling a young woman who worms her way into the worlds of social media stars and then murders them feels like a modern-day version of a tawdry yet network-approved weekly TV movie. The surprising aspect regarding Influencers remains how much better it proves to be compared to much of the competition, regardless of screen size. It’s the kind of thriller capable of giving other movies a bad case of FOMO.

Recapping the Original and Setting the Stage

2022’s Influencer follows the enigmatic CW (Cassandra Naud) as she quietly chooses traveling alone influencer targets, entices them to their doom, and conceals those deaths (for a time) by seizing control of their online accounts. The film leaves off (spoiler ahead) with CW marooned on an uninhabited island off the coast of Thailand, after her most recent mark, Madison (Emily Tennant), reverses their roles against her.

This provides the 2025 Influencers some early ambiguity, when returning filmmaker Kurtis David Harder picks up with the character CW happily living with her girlfriend Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. During a trip marking the couple’s one-year anniversary, UK-based influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) catches CW’s eye and anger.

CW comments to Diane that someone should try leaving a device-obsessed online personality somewhere without any devices and see whether they can make it. Are we witnessing an origin-story prequel? Did CW become extremist by seeing the preferential treatment given to a single fame-seeker?

Shifting Perspectives and Global Pursuits

The narrative viewpoint shifts several more times, ultimately revealing those early scenes’ place in the timeline. The story revisits Madison, who has been exonerated for committing CW’s crimes, but still faces suspicion over her version of the events, which includes the killing of her boyfriend. We also follow Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), living in Bali and trying to juice his career as half of a conservative-influencer duo alongside Ariana (Veronica Long), although his chosen platform is bro-heavy streams, as opposed to the curated images that typically capture CW's interest.

Naud remains terrifically magnetic in the part, a role that appears particularly tailor-made for her talents. (She even created CW's striking wardrobe.) Although the follow-up's screentime balance leans heavily into CW — the original felt more equally divided between her and Madison — it still works as a tale of rival amateur detectives, as Madison and CW employ fake accounts, Insta-stalking, and a seemingly limitless travel fund to chase and/or escape each other. Then again, maybe the unlimited budget aren't needed. Influencers have a talent for getting to explore posh places at little cost, a skill which CW mirrors with her more overt scheming.

Resourceful Production and Cinematic Travelogue

The creative team for Influencers seem similarly resourceful in locating beautiful places to film, though they were presumably more legitimate in their methods. Most of the film seems to be shot on location, giving it an authentic gravity that remains even as many scenes involve a handful of actors of people looking at computer or phone screens.

It’s the same principle which allowed the Bond franchise look so persistently lavish for decades: Indeed, explosive action and special effects can display a big budget, but simply offering a kind of visual tour for the audience also seems deeply filmic. It’s also particularly appropriate for a narrative so dependent on the simultaneous surface-level allure and desperate hustle of creating envy-inducing digital content.

Every character in Bali, similar to those who were in Thailand in the first film, seem to have access to impossibly chic contemporary villas; films exist concerning beach rescuers which don't feature as much aerial pool footage. These individuals have to convincingly inhabit these lush, far-flung locations to emphasize the uncomfortable paradox of how often everyone — including the woman exacting revenge on the influencers’ self-centered phoniness — nevertheless spends plenty of time under the light of their screens.

Nuanced Portrayals and Tech-Savvy Tension

At the same time, Harder hasn’t authored a screed against the emptiness of online fame. While it can be gratifying to watch CW exploit various online personalities, and a sense reminiscent of Hitchcock of identification allows us to hope she doesn’t get caught, the filmmaker is somewhat understanding of the key influencer figures. Previously, he tapped into the loneliness Madison felt during supposedly dream getaways. Here, the director appears confident that merely watching Jacob at work will reveal that he’s peddling false masculinity to other gullible men; he resists caricaturing the character further. 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 double standards, not a victim by it.

The flip side of this balanced approach is that it can sometimes appear that he’s nodding at elements of contemporary digital culture without investigating them. This is especially true regarding how he brings AI into the plot, a fascinating turn that lacks the psychological edge it should have. The retitled sequel for the film could offer fans of the first movie hope for a larger-scale ante-upping, and the film does eventually provide that, with an appropriately wild final act. But before that, it’s more like a polished Hitchcock thriller than a wild-eyed, technology-obsessed Brian De Palma thriller. Influencers’ extensive use of real-world locations may also be what prevents it from coming across like pure nightmare fuel. The world may be overrun with always-online creators, digital deception, and self-serving tourism, but reality itself is still here, at least for now.