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“This whole affair smells of a bad made-for-TV,” observes an opportunistic podcaster midway through the chilling follow-up Influencers. In the moment, he’s being manipulatively dismissive toward an interviewee with an outlandish story he previously said he trusted. But his assessment of what’s happening on screen isn't inaccurate. On its face, a pair of streaming movies about a woman who insinuates herself into the lives of online influencers and then murders them feels like a modern-day version of a tawdry but network-approved Movie of the Week. The wild thing regarding Influencers remains how much better it proves to be than plenty of its competition, irrespective of screen size. It is precisely the thriller capable of giving other movies a serious bout of FOMO.

Revisiting the Original and Setting the Stage

The 2022 film Influencer tracks the enigmatic CW (Cassandra Naud) while she quietly chooses traveling alone social media targets, entices them to their doom, and conceals those murders (at least temporarily) by seizing control of their socials. The movie concludes (spoiler ahead) with CW stranded on a deserted island off the coast of Thailand, following her most recent mark, Madison (Emily Tennant), turns the tables on her.

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

CW remarks to Diane that someone should try leaving a phone-addicted online personality in a place with no technology to see if they can make it. Are we witnessing an origin-story prequel? Did CW become extremist after witnessing the preferential treatment given to a single clout-chaser?

Shifting Perspectives and International Chases

The narrative viewpoint changes multiple times, eventually clarifying those introductory moments' chronological position. Harder catches up with Madison, who has been exonerated for committing CW's offenses, yet still encounters doubt regarding her recounting of what happened, including the murder of Madison’s boyfriend. The film also follows Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), living in Bali and trying to juice his career as part of a right-wing-influencer duo alongside Ariana (Veronica Long), though his chosen platform is bro-heavy streams, rather than the Instagram photos that typically attract CW's interest.

Naud remains terrifically magnetic in her role, a role that appears particularly custom-fit for her talents. (She also designed CW's eye-catching outfits.) Although the sequel’s focus tips heavily toward CW — the original felt more equally divided between her and Madison — it still works as a tale of dueling amateur detectives, with both women both use fabricated profiles, social media surveillance, and an apparently unlimited travel budget to chase or evade each other. Then again, perhaps the unlimited budget isn’t necessary. Online personalities possess a knack for gaining access to posh places without paying much, a skill which CW mirrors with her more overt scamming.

Ingenious Filmmaking and Visual Wanderlust

The filmmakers behind Influencers appear equally ingenious about finding beautiful places to visit, though they were presumably less nefarious about it. The vast majority of the movie appears to be filmed in real places, giving it a real-world weight that lingers even when many scenes consist of 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 visual effects can show off large spending, however just providing a kind of visual tour for the audience also feels inherently cinematic. It’s also particularly appropriate for a story so dependent on the coexisting superficial glamour and try-hard grind of creating envy-inducing online content.

All of the characters in Bali, similar to those who were in Thailand in the first film, appear to enjoy access to impossibly chic modern bungalows; films exist concerning beach rescuers which don't feature as much overhead swimming-pool video. These individuals have to convincingly inhabit these luxurious, far-flung locations to emphasize the uncomfortable paradox of how frequently each person — including the woman exacting revenge upon the online stars' self-centered phoniness — nonetheless devotes much time in the glow of their devices.

Nuanced Portrayals and Digital-Age Suspense

At the same time, Harder hasn’t authored a rant against the emptiness of online fame. Though it can be gratifying to watch CW manipulate different internet celebrities, and a sense reminiscent of Hitchcock of identification lets us to hope she doesn’t get caught, the filmmaker is relatively understanding of the key influencer figures. Previously, he keyed into the loneliness Madison felt during ostensibly dream getaways. Here, the director appears confident that just observing Jacob in action will reveal that he is selling snake-oil masculinity to other doofuses; he resists turning into a caricature the character. He even grants Jacob a degree of respect by showing his true devotion to his partner; he is two-faced, but Ariana is a collaborator in his double standards, not someone exploited of it.

The other side of this balanced approach means it can sometimes appear as if he is acknowledging bits of modern online life without investigating them further. This is especially true regarding how he brings AI into the story, an intriguing development that lacks the psychological edge it should have. The pluralized title of Influencers might give fans of the first movie hope for a larger-scale escalation, and the film does eventually provide exactly that, with an appropriately wild final act. However, initially, it resembles more a polished Hitchcock thriller than an frenzied, technology-obsessed De Palma-style shocker. Influencers’ heavy use of real-world locations may also be what keeps it from coming across like utter horror. The world might be saturated with content-churning influencers, online fraud, and self-serving tourism, but the world itself remains present, for now.