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“Everything about this reeks of a cheap made-for-TV,” observes a cynical commentator midway through the chilling follow-up Influencers. At that point, his tone is dismissive in a calculated way toward an interviewee whose outlandish story he once said he trusted. Yet his assessment of what’s happening on screen isn’t wrong. On its face, two films on demand chronicling a woman who worms her way into the worlds of social media stars and then murders them feels like a modern-day version of a lurid but network-approved Movie of the Week. The wild thing about Influencers is how much better it is compared to much of the competition, irrespective of where you watch it. It is precisely the thriller capable of giving other movies a bad case of FOMO.

Recapping the First Film and Setting the Stage

The 2022 film Influencer follows the mysterious CW (Cassandra Naud) as she methodically selects solo-traveling influencer targets, lures them to their doom, and conceals those murders (for a time) by seizing control of their online accounts. The movie 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 lends 2025's Influencers a degree of ambiguity, when returning filmmaker the director picks up with the character CW happily living with her girlfriend Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. On a journey marking their first anniversary, British influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) draws CW’s eye and anger.

CW remarks to her partner that someone ought to attempt stranding a phone-addicted online personality in a place with no technology and see if they can survive. Is this a backstory prequel? Did CW become extremist by seeing the special treatment afforded one clout-chaser?

Shifting Perspectives and Global Pursuits

The narrative viewpoint shifts several more times, eventually clarifying those early scenes’ place in the timeline. Harder catches up with Madison, who has been exonerated for committing CW's offenses, but still faces doubt over her recounting of what happened, including the murder of Madison’s boyfriend. We also follow Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), based in Bali attempting to boost his profile as half of a conservative-influencer power couple alongside Ariana (Veronica Long), though his preferred medium involves masculine-focused livestreams, rather than the curated images that normally attract CW’s attention.

Naud remains immensely captivating in her role, a role that appears especially custom-fit to her strengths. (She also designed CW's eye-catching outfits.) Although the sequel’s focus tips heavily toward CW — the first film felt more equally divided between the two women — it still works as a story of dueling amateur detectives, with both women both use fabricated profiles, social media surveillance, and a seemingly limitless travel fund to chase and/or escape each other. Of course, perhaps the vast resources isn’t necessary. Influencers have a knack for getting to explore luxurious locales without paying much, a skill that CW echoes through her more blatant scheming.

Resourceful Production and Cinematic Travelogue

The creative team for Influencers seem similarly resourceful about finding stunning locations to visit, although they were presumably less nefarious about it. The vast majority of the movie seems to be shot on location, giving it an authentic gravity that remains even as numerous sequences consist of a relatively small cast of characters looking at computer or phone screens.

It’s the same principle that made the Bond franchise appear so consistently opulent over the years: Indeed, big action and visual effects can display large spending, however simply offering a kind of visual tour for the audience also seems deeply filmic. It’s also especially fitting for a narrative so rooted in the coexisting surface-level allure and try-hard grind involved in producing jealousy-worthy digital content.

Every character in Bali, similar to those who were in Thailand in the original, appear to enjoy access to impossibly chic modern bungalows; there are movies concerning beach rescuers that don’t show off this much overhead swimming-pool footage. These individuals have to convincingly occupy these lush, remote places to emphasize the uneasy irony of how frequently each person — even the woman exacting revenge on the influencers’ narcissistic falseness — nevertheless devotes much time in the glow of their screens.

Balanced Depictions and Digital-Age Suspense

Simultaneously, the director has not crafted a rant targeting the emptiness of online fame. Though it is gratifying to see CW exploit different internet celebrities, and a sense reminiscent of Hitchcock of alignment lets us to hope she doesn’t get caught, Harder is relatively understanding of the key influencer figures. In the first movie, he keyed into the isolation Madison felt during supposedly dream getaways. In this film, Harder seems to trust that merely watching Jacob in action will make it clear that he’s peddling false masculinity to other gullible men; he avoids caricaturing the character. He even grants Jacob a degree of respect by showing his true devotion to his partner; he’s a hypocrite, yet Ariana is a collaborator in his double standards, not a victim by it.

The flip side of Harder’s even-keeled presentation means it may occasionally seem as if he is acknowledging elements of contemporary digital culture without investigating them further. This is especially true of the way he brings AI into the story, an intriguing development which misses the psychological edge it should have. The pluralized title for the film might give fans of the first movie expectations of a larger-scale ante-upping, and the movie ultimately delivers exactly that, with a suitably chaotic climax. But before that, it’s more like a sleek Hitchcock thriller than a wild-eyed, tech-addled Brian De Palma thriller. Influencers’ heavy use of actual places may also be what keeps it from seeming like pure nightmare fuel. The world might be saturated with content-churning influencers, digital deception, and self-serving tourism, but reality itself remains present, for now.