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“The entire situation stinks of a cheap made-for-TV,” states an opportunistic podcaster midway through the chilling follow-up Influencers. In the moment, his tone is dismissive in a calculated way toward an interviewee with an bizarre tale he previously claimed he believed. Yet his description of what’s happening on screen isn’t wrong. Superficially, two streaming movies about a young woman who worms her way into the worlds of online influencers before killing them seems like a modern-day version of a lurid yet network-approved weekly TV movie. The wild thing regarding Influencers is just how superior it is compared to much of its competition, regardless of where you watch it. It’s the kind of suspense film that should give its peers a bad case of FOMO.

Revisiting the Original and Establishing the Scene

The 2022 film Influencer tracks the mysterious CW (Cassandra Naud) while she quietly chooses solo-traveling influencer targets, lures them to their deaths, and conceals those murders (at least temporarily) by taking control of their socials. The film concludes (spoiler ahead) with CW stranded on a deserted island off the coast of Thailand, after her latest target, Madison (Emily Tennant), turns the tables against her.

This provides 2025's Influencers some early ambiguity, as returning filmmaker the director picks up with CW happily living with her girlfriend Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. During a trip to celebrate their one-year anniversary, UK-based influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) catches CW’s eye and ire.

CW remarks to Diane that a person should try stranding a device-obsessed online personality in a place with no technology and see if they can survive. Is this an origin-story prequel? Was CW radicalized by seeing the special treatment afforded a single clout-chaser?

Shifting Perspectives and Global Pursuits

The story’s perspective shifts several more times, ultimately revealing those introductory moments' chronological position. Harder catches up with Madison, now exonerated for carrying out CW's offenses, yet still encounters doubt over her recounting of what happened, including the murder of her boyfriend. The film also follows Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), based in Bali attempting to boost his profile as part of a conservative-influencer duo alongside Ariana (Veronica Long), though his preferred medium involves masculine-focused livestreams, as opposed to the Instagram photos that normally attract CW’s attention.

The actor continues to be immensely captivating in the part, which seems particularly tailor-made for her talents. (She even created CW's striking wardrobe.) Although the follow-up's screentime balance leans heavily into CW — the original felt more equally divided between the two women — it still works as a tale of rival investigators, as Madison and CW both use fabricated profiles, social media surveillance, and a seemingly limitless travel fund to chase or evade each other. Then again, maybe the unlimited budget isn’t necessary. Influencers have a knack for gaining access to luxurious locales at little cost, an ability 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 film, though they were presumably less nefarious about it. Most of the film seems to be shot on location, providing it an authentic gravity that lingers even when many scenes involve a handful of actors of characters looking at digital devices.

It’s the same principle which allowed the James Bond movies appear so consistently opulent over the years: Indeed, big action and visual effects can display large spending, but simply offering a travelogue of sorts for the audience also feels deeply filmic. This is particularly appropriate for a story so dependent on the simultaneous superficial glamour and desperate hustle involved in producing envy-inducing digital content.

Every character in Bali, similar to those who were in Thailand in the original, appear to enjoy access to impossibly chic contemporary villas; there are movies about lifeguards that don’t show off this much aerial pool video. These individuals have to convincingly inhabit these lush, far-flung locations to emphasize the uncomfortable paradox of how often everyone — including the woman exacting revenge on the influencers’ self-centered phoniness — 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 screed targeting the vacuousness of the influencer industry. While it is satisfying to see CW manipulate different internet celebrities, and a Hitchcockian sense of identification allows us to wish she evades capture, Harder is relatively sympathetic to the key influencer figures. In the first movie, he keyed into the isolation Madison felt during supposedly dream getaways. Here, Harder seems to trust that just observing Jacob in action will reveal that he’s peddling 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 girlfriend; he’s a hypocrite, yet Ariana is a partner in his double standards, not someone exploited by it.

The other side of this balanced approach means it may occasionally seem as if he’s nodding at bits of modern online life without investigating them. This is particularly evident regarding how he introduces artificial intelligence into the story, a fascinating turn which misses the psychological edge it should have. The retitled sequel of Influencers could offer fans of the first movie hope for an Aliens-style ante-upping, and the movie ultimately delivers that, with an appropriately wild final act. But before that, it’s more like a polished Hitchcock thriller than a wild-eyed, technology-obsessed De Palma-style shocker. Influencers’ extensive use of real-world locations may also be what keeps it from seeming like pure nightmare fuel. Our society might be saturated with content-churning influencers, online fraud, and self-serving tourism, but the world itself is still here, for now.