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“Everything about this reeks of a cheap TV movie,” remarks a cynical commentator during the chilling follow-up Influencers. At that point, he’s being manipulatively dismissive toward an interviewee with an outlandish story he once claimed he believed. Yet his description of the events in the movie isn’t wrong. On its face, a pair of streaming movies about a young woman who insinuates herself into the worlds of online influencers and then murders them seems like the 21st-century equivalent of a tawdry but network-approved weekly TV movie. The surprising aspect regarding Influencers remains just how superior it is than plenty of the competition, irrespective of where you watch it. It is precisely the thriller capable of giving other movies a bad case of FOMO.

Revisiting the Original and Setting the Stage

The 2022 film Influencer follows the mysterious CW (Cassandra Naud) while she methodically selects traveling alone influencer targets, lures them to their deaths, and covers up those deaths (at least temporarily) by seizing control of their online accounts. The film concludes (spoiler ahead) with CW marooned on an uninhabited island near the coast of Thailand, following her most recent mark, Madison (Emily Tennant), turns the tables on her.

This lends 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. On a journey to celebrate the couple’s one-year anniversary, UK-based influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) catches CW's attention and ire.

CW comments to Diane that someone should try leaving a phone-addicted online personality somewhere without any devices to see if they can survive. Are we witnessing a backstory prequel? Did CW become extremist after witnessing the preferential treatment given to one fame-seeker?

Shifting Perspectives and International Chases

The story’s perspective shifts several more times, ultimately revealing those early scenes’ place in the timeline. Harder catches up with Madison, now exonerated for carrying out CW's offenses, but still faces doubt over her recounting of the events, including the murder of Madison’s boyfriend. The film also follows Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), living in Bali and trying to boost his profile as part of a right-wing-influencer duo with Ariana (Veronica Long), though his chosen platform is bro-heavy streams, as opposed to the curated images that typically capture CW’s attention.

Naud remains immensely captivating in her role, a role that appears especially custom-fit for her talents. (She also designed CW's eye-catching wardrobe.) While the sequel’s focus leans heavily into CW — the first film felt more equally divided between her and Madison — it still functions as a story of rival investigators, with both women both use fabricated profiles, social media surveillance, and a seemingly unlimited travel budget to chase and/or escape each other. Of course, maybe the unlimited budget isn’t necessary. Influencers have a knack for gaining access to posh places without paying much, a skill which CW mirrors through her more blatant scamming.

Ingenious Filmmaking and Visual Wanderlust

The filmmakers behind Influencers appear equally resourceful about finding stunning locations to film, though they were likely more legitimate about it. Most of the movie appears to be filmed in real places, giving it an authentic gravity that lingers even as many scenes involve a relatively small cast of characters looking at computer or phone screens.

It follows the same logic that made the Bond franchise appear so consistently opulent for decades: Indeed, explosive action and visual effects can display a big budget, but simply offering a travelogue of sorts for the audience also feels inherently cinematic. It’s also especially fitting for a narrative so rooted in the simultaneous superficial glamour and try-hard grind involved in producing jealousy-worthy online content.

Every character visiting Bali, like those who were in Thailand in the original, seem to have entry to unbelievably stylish modern bungalows; films exist about lifeguards that don’t show off this much aerial pool video. These individuals must believably inhabit these lush, remote places to emphasize the uneasy irony of how frequently everyone — including the woman wreaking vengeance upon the online stars' narcissistic falseness — nonetheless devotes much time in the glow of their devices.

Balanced Depictions and Tech-Savvy Tension

At the same time, Harder hasn’t authored a screed against the vacuousness of the influencer industry. Though it is gratifying to see CW manipulate different internet celebrities, and a Hitchcockian sense of identification allows us to hope she doesn’t get caught, Harder is relatively sympathetic to the key influencer figures. In the first movie, he tapped into the isolation Madison felt during supposedly dream getaways. Here, the director appears confident that just observing Jacob in action will reveal that he’s peddling false masculinity to other gullible men; he resists caricaturing the character further. He even grants Jacob a measure of dignity by showing his genuine loyalty to his partner; he is two-faced, but Ariana is a collaborator in his hypocrisy, not someone exploited of it.

The other side of Harder’s even-keeled presentation is that it can sometimes appear as if he is acknowledging bits of contemporary digital culture without deeply exploring them further. This is especially true regarding how he introduces artificial intelligence into the story, a fascinating turn that lacks the psychological edge it deserves. The retitled sequel for the film might give devotees of the original hope for an Aliens-style escalation, and the film does eventually provide that, with an appropriately chaotic climax. However, initially, it resembles more a sleek Hitchcock thriller than an wild-eyed, technology-obsessed De Palma-style shocker. Influencers’ extensive use of real-world locations might also be what prevents it from coming across like pure nightmare fuel. The world may be overrun with always-online creators, online fraud, and exploitative travel, but the world itself remains present, at least for now.