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“Everything about this stinks of a bad TV movie,” remarks a cynical commentator during the chilling follow-up Influencers. At that point, he’s being manipulatively dismissive toward an interviewee whose outlandish story he once said he trusted. Yet his description of what’s happening on screen isn't inaccurate. On its face, two streaming movies chronicling a woman who insinuates herself into the lives of online influencers and then murders them feels like the 21st-century equivalent of a tawdry but cable-ready weekly TV movie. The wild thing about Influencers is just how superior it is than plenty of the competition, irrespective of where you watch it. It’s the kind of thriller that should give other movies a serious bout of FOMO.

Recapping the Original and Setting the Stage

The 2022 film Influencer tracks the enigmatic CW (Cassandra Naud) as she quietly chooses traveling alone social media targets, entices them to their deaths, and conceals those deaths (at least temporarily) by seizing control of their socials. The movie concludes (spoiler ahead) with CW marooned on a deserted island near the coast of Thailand, after her most recent mark, Madison (Emily Tennant), reverses their roles against her.

This provides the 2025 Influencers a degree of ambiguity, as returning writer-director Kurtis David Harder resumes with CW happily living alongside her partner Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. On a journey to celebrate the couple’s one-year anniversary, UK-based influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) draws CW's attention and ire.

CW comments to her partner that someone ought to attempt leaving a phone-addicted influencer somewhere without any devices to see whether they can make it. Are we witnessing a backstory prequel? Was CW radicalized after witnessing the special treatment given to a single fame-seeker?

Shifting Perspectives and International Chases

The story’s perspective changes multiple times, eventually clarifying those introductory moments' chronological position. Harder catches up with Madison, who has been cleared of carrying out CW's offenses, yet still encounters suspicion over her version of what happened, including the killing of Madison’s boyfriend. The film also follows Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), based in Bali and trying to boost his profile as part of a right-wing-influencer duo alongside Ariana (Veronica Long), though his preferred medium involves masculine-focused livestreams, rather than the curated images that normally capture CW’s attention.

The actor continues to be terrifically magnetic in her role, a role that appears particularly custom-fit to her strengths. (She even created CW's striking wardrobe.) While the sequel’s screentime balance leans heavily into CW — the first film seemed more balanced between her and Madison — it still works as a story of rival amateur detectives, with both women employ fabricated profiles, social media surveillance, and an apparently unlimited travel budget to chase or evade one another. Of course, perhaps the unlimited budget isn’t necessary. Influencers have a talent for getting to explore luxurious locales at little cost, an ability that CW echoes with her more overt scamming.

Resourceful Production and Cinematic Travelogue

The creative team for Influencers appear equally resourceful about finding beautiful places to visit, although they were presumably more legitimate in their methods. Most of the film seems to be shot on location, providing it an authentic gravity that lingers even as many scenes consist of a relatively small cast of people staring at computer or phone screens.

It follows the same logic that made the Bond franchise look so consistently opulent for decades: Yes, explosive action and visual effects can display a big budget, but just providing a kind of visual tour to viewers also feels inherently cinematic. It’s also particularly appropriate for a story so dependent on the simultaneous surface-level allure and try-hard grind involved in producing envy-inducing online content.

All of the characters visiting Bali, like those staying in Thailand in the first film, appear to enjoy access to impossibly chic contemporary villas; there are movies concerning beach rescuers which don't feature as much overhead swimming-pool footage. The characters must believably occupy these luxurious, far-flung locations to emphasize the uneasy irony of how often each person — even the woman exacting revenge on the influencers’ narcissistic falseness — nonetheless spends plenty of time under the light of their screens.

Balanced Depictions and Tech-Savvy Tension

Simultaneously, the director has not crafted a screed against the vacuousness of online fame. While it can be gratifying to watch CW manipulate various online personalities, and a sense reminiscent of Hitchcock of identification allows us to wish she doesn’t get caught, the filmmaker is somewhat sympathetic to the major influencer characters. Previously, he tapped into the isolation Madison felt during supposedly envy-worthy vacations. In this film, Harder seems to trust that just observing Jacob in action will make it clear that he’s peddling snake-oil masculinity to other doofuses; he resists caricaturing the character. He even grants Jacob a measure of dignity by showing his true devotion to his partner; he’s a hypocrite, yet Ariana is a collaborator in his double standards, not a victim of it.

The flip side of this balanced approach means it may occasionally seem that he is acknowledging bits of modern online life without investigating them. This is particularly evident of the way he introduces artificial intelligence into the story, a fascinating turn which misses the psychological edge it deserves. The retitled sequel of Influencers might give devotees of the original hope for an Aliens-style ante-upping, and the film ultimately delivers exactly that, with a suitably wild final act. However, initially, it’s more like a sleek Alfred Hitchcock movie than a frenzied, tech-addled Brian De Palma thriller. Influencers’ extensive use of actual places may also be what prevents it from seeming like pure nightmare fuel. Our society might be saturated with content-churning influencers, online fraud, and exploitative travel, but reality itself remains present, for now.