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“This whole affair stinks like a bad TV movie,” states a cynical podcaster midway through the horror sequel Influencers. In the moment, his tone is dismissive in a calculated way of a guest with an outlandish story he previously claimed he believed. But his description of the events on screen isn’t wrong. Superficially, two streaming movies chronicling a young woman who worms her way into the worlds of social media stars and then murders them feels like the 21st-century equivalent of a tawdry but cable-ready weekly TV movie. The surprising aspect regarding Influencers is how much better it is than plenty of the competition, regardless of screen size. It is precisely the thriller capable of giving other movies a bad case of FOMO.

Revisiting the First Film and Setting the Stage

The 2022 film Influencer tracks the enigmatic CW (Cassandra Naud) while she quietly chooses solo-traveling social media targets, lures them to their deaths, and covers up those deaths (at least temporarily) by seizing control of their socials. The movie leaves off (spoiler ahead) with CW marooned on a deserted island near the coast of Thailand, following her most recent mark, Madison (Emily Tennant), reverses their roles on her.

This provides 2025's Influencers a degree of ambiguity, as returning filmmaker the director resumes with the character CW happily living with her girlfriend Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. During a trip marking their one-year anniversary, British influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) catches CW's attention and anger.

CW remarks to Diane that a person ought to attempt stranding a phone-addicted online personality somewhere without any devices to see if they can make it. Are we witnessing an origin-story prequel? Did CW become extremist by seeing the special treatment given to a single fame-seeker?

Evolving Viewpoints and Global Pursuits

The narrative viewpoint shifts several more times, eventually clarifying those early scenes’ chronological position. Harder catches up with Madison, now cleared of carrying out CW’s crimes, yet still encounters suspicion over her version of the events, including the murder of her boyfriend. We also follow Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), based in Bali and trying to juice his career as half of a conservative-influencer power couple with Ariana (Veronica Long), though his preferred medium involves masculine-focused livestreams, as opposed to the curated images that normally attract CW's interest.

The actor continues to be immensely captivating in her role, a role that appears especially tailor-made for her talents. (She even created CW's eye-catching outfits.) While the sequel’s screentime balance leans heavily into CW — the original seemed more balanced between her and Madison — it still works as a story of dueling amateur detectives, as Madison and CW employ fake accounts, social media surveillance, and an apparently limitless travel fund to chase or evade each other. Then again, maybe the unlimited budget isn’t necessary. Online personalities possess a talent for gaining access to luxurious locales at little cost, a skill which CW mirrors with her more overt scheming.

Ingenious Filmmaking and Visual Wanderlust

The creative team for Influencers seem similarly ingenious in locating beautiful places to film, although they were presumably less nefarious about it. The vast majority of the movie seems to be filmed in real places, giving it an authentic gravity that remains even when many scenes consist of a relatively small cast of people looking at digital devices.

It’s the same principle which allowed the Bond franchise appear so consistently opulent for decades: Indeed, big action and special effects can show off large spending, but just providing a kind of visual tour to viewers also seems deeply filmic. This is particularly appropriate for a story so dependent on the simultaneous surface-level allure and try-hard grind involved in producing jealousy-worthy digital content.

Every character in Bali, similar to those staying in Thailand in the first film, seem to have access to unbelievably stylish contemporary villas; there are movies about lifeguards which don't feature as much aerial pool footage. These individuals must believably inhabit these lush, remote places to emphasize the uneasy irony of how often each person — including the woman wreaking vengeance on the influencers’ narcissistic falseness — nevertheless spends plenty of time in the glow of their devices.

Balanced Depictions and Tech-Savvy Tension

At the same time, Harder hasn’t authored a rant targeting the vacuousness of the influencer industry. Though it is satisfying to watch CW exploit various online personalities, and a Hitchcockian sense of identification allows us to wish she doesn’t get caught, the filmmaker is relatively understanding of the key influencer figures. In the first movie, he keyed into the isolation Madison felt during ostensibly envy-worthy vacations. In this film, the director appears confident that just observing Jacob at work will reveal that he is selling false masculinity to other gullible men; he avoids caricaturing the character further. He even grants Jacob a degree of respect through depicting his genuine loyalty to his girlfriend; he’s a hypocrite, but Ariana is a partner in his hypocrisy, not someone exploited by it.

The other side of Harder’s even-keeled presentation is that it may occasionally seem that he is acknowledging elements of modern online life without investigating them. This is particularly evident of the way he brings AI into the story, an intriguing development that lacks the psychosexual kick it should have. The retitled sequel of Influencers could offer fans of the first movie expectations of a larger-scale ante-upping, and the film does eventually provide exactly that, with a suitably chaotic climax. But before that, it’s more like a polished Alfred Hitchcock movie than a frenzied, technology-obsessed De Palma-style shocker. Influencers’ heavy use of actual places might also be what prevents it from coming across like pure nightmare fuel. The world may be overrun with content-churning influencers, digital deception, and self-serving tourism, but the world itself is still here, at least for now.