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“The entire situation smells of a cheap TV movie,” states an opportunistic commentator during the chilling follow-up Influencers. At that point, his tone is manipulatively dismissive toward an interviewee with an bizarre tale he previously said he trusted. Yet his assessment of what’s happening in the movie isn't inaccurate. On its face, a pair of streaming movies chronicling a woman who worms her way into the worlds of online influencers before killing them feels like a modern-day version of a lurid but cable-ready Movie of the Week. The surprising aspect about Influencers is how much better it proves to be than plenty of the competition, regardless of screen size. It’s the kind of thriller capable of giving its peers a bad case of FOMO.

Revisiting the First Film and Setting the Stage

The 2022 film Influencer follows the mysterious CW (Cassandra Naud) while she quietly chooses solo-traveling influencer targets, entices them to their doom, and conceals those murders (for a time) by seizing control of their online accounts. The film leaves off (spoiler ahead) with CW marooned on a deserted island off the coast of Thailand, after her most recent mark, Madison (Emily Tennant), turns the tables on her.

This provides 2025's Influencers some early mystery, when returning filmmaker Kurtis David Harder resumes with the character CW happily living with her girlfriend Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. On a journey to celebrate their first anniversary, British influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) draws CW's attention and ire.

CW remarks to her partner that a person should try leaving a device-obsessed influencer somewhere without any devices to see whether they can make it. Is this an origin-story prequel? Did CW become extremist after witnessing the preferential treatment afforded a single clout-chaser?

Shifting Perspectives and Global Pursuits

The story’s perspective shifts several more times, ultimately revealing those introductory moments' place in the timeline. The story revisits Madison, now exonerated for carrying out CW’s crimes, yet still encounters doubt regarding her version of what happened, including the killing of her boyfriend. The film also follows 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 chosen platform involves masculine-focused livestreams, as opposed to the curated images that normally capture CW's interest.

The actor continues to be terrifically magnetic in her role, a role that appears especially tailor-made to her strengths. (She also designed CW's eye-catching outfits.) While the sequel’s focus leans heavily into CW — the original seemed more balanced between the two women — it still works as a story of dueling amateur detectives, with both women employ fake accounts, Insta-stalking, and a seemingly limitless travel fund to pursue and/or escape each other. Then again, perhaps the unlimited budget aren't needed. Influencers have a knack for getting to explore luxurious locales without paying much, an ability that CW echoes through her more blatant scamming.

Resourceful Production and Cinematic Travelogue

The creative team for Influencers seem similarly ingenious in locating stunning locations to film, though they were likely less nefarious about it. Most of the film seems to be filmed in real places, providing it a real-world weight that lingers even as numerous sequences consist of a relatively small cast of people looking at computer or phone screens.

It’s the same principle which allowed the James Bond movies look so persistently lavish for decades: Yes, explosive action and special effects can display a big budget, but simply offering a kind of visual tour to viewers also seems inherently cinematic. It’s also particularly appropriate for a story so rooted in the coexisting surface-level allure and try-hard grind of creating jealousy-worthy online content.

All of the characters in Bali, like those who were in Thailand in the original, appear to enjoy access to unbelievably stylish contemporary villas; there are movies concerning beach rescuers which don't feature this much overhead swimming-pool footage. The characters must believably inhabit these luxurious, far-flung locations to highlight the uncomfortable paradox of how frequently each person — even the woman exacting revenge on the influencers’ self-centered phoniness — nonetheless spends plenty of time in the glow of their devices.

Nuanced Portrayals and Digital-Age Suspense

At the same time, the director has not crafted a rant targeting the emptiness of online fame. Though it can be satisfying to watch CW manipulate various online personalities, and a sense reminiscent of Hitchcock of alignment allows us to wish she doesn’t get caught, Harder is relatively sympathetic to the major influencer characters. In the first movie, he tapped into the isolation Madison felt while on ostensibly dream getaways. In this film, Harder seems to trust that just observing Jacob in action will reveal that he’s peddling false masculinity to other doofuses; he resists caricaturing the character further. He even gives Jacob a measure of dignity through depicting his genuine loyalty to his girlfriend; he’s a hypocrite, but Ariana is a partner in his double standards, not a victim of it.

The other side of this balanced approach means it can sometimes appear as if he’s nodding at bits of contemporary digital culture without deeply exploring them further. This is especially true regarding how he introduces artificial intelligence into the plot, a fascinating turn that lacks the psychological edge it should have. The retitled sequel for the film might give fans of the first movie expectations of an Aliens-style escalation, and the film ultimately delivers exactly that, with a suitably wild final act. But before that, it’s more like a sleek Hitchcock thriller than a frenzied, technology-obsessed De Palma-style shocker. Influencers’ extensive use of actual places might also be what keeps it from seeming like pure nightmare fuel. Our society may be overrun with content-churning influencers, digital deception, and self-serving tourism, but reality itself is still here, for now.