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“The entire situation reeks of a cheap made-for-TV,” observes a cynical podcaster midway through the chilling follow-up Influencers. In the moment, his tone is manipulatively dismissive toward an interviewee whose outlandish story he previously said he trusted. Yet his description of what’s happening in the movie isn't inaccurate. On its face, two streaming movies chronicling a young woman who worms her way into the worlds of social media stars before killing them seems like the 21st-century equivalent of a lurid yet cable-ready weekly TV movie. The surprising aspect about Influencers is how much better it proves to be than plenty of its competition, irrespective of screen size. It is precisely the thriller that should give its peers a bad case of FOMO.

Revisiting the First Film and Establishing the Scene

2022’s Influencer tracks the mysterious CW (Cassandra Naud) while she quietly chooses solo-traveling influencer targets, entices them to their deaths, and conceals those deaths (for a time) by taking control of their socials. The film leaves off (spoiler ahead) with CW stranded on a deserted island off the coast of Thailand, following her most recent mark, Madison (Emily Tennant), reverses their roles against her.

This lends the 2025 Influencers a degree of mystery, when returning writer-director Kurtis David Harder picks up with the character CW happily living alongside her partner Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. On a journey to celebrate the couple’s one-year anniversary, British influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) catches CW's attention and anger.

CW comments to her partner that someone should try stranding a phone-addicted influencer somewhere without any devices and see whether they can make it. Is this a backstory prequel? Was CW radicalized by seeing the preferential treatment given to a single fame-seeker?

Shifting Perspectives and Global Pursuits

The story’s perspective changes multiple times, ultimately revealing those early scenes’ chronological position. The story revisits Madison, who has been exonerated for committing CW’s crimes, yet still encounters doubt over her recounting of the events, including the killing of Madison’s boyfriend. The film also follows Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), living in Bali attempting to boost his profile as part of a right-wing-influencer duo alongside Ariana (Veronica Long), although his chosen platform is bro-heavy streams, as opposed to the curated images that typically capture CW's interest.

Naud remains terrifically magnetic in the part, which seems particularly tailor-made for her talents. (She even created CW's eye-catching outfits.) While the sequel’s focus tips heavily toward CW — the original felt more equally divided between her and Madison — it still functions as a tale of rival amateur detectives, with both women both use fake accounts, 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. Online personalities possess a talent for gaining access to luxurious locales at little cost, a skill which CW mirrors with her more overt scheming.

Ingenious Filmmaking and Visual Wanderlust

The creative team for Influencers appear equally resourceful in locating beautiful places to film, although they were presumably more legitimate about it. Most of the film appears to be filmed in real places, giving it an authentic gravity that lingers even when many scenes consist of a handful of actors of characters looking at digital devices.

It’s the same principle that made the James Bond movies look so persistently lavish for decades: Indeed, explosive action and visual effects can display large spending, however simply offering a travelogue of sorts to viewers also seems inherently cinematic. It’s also particularly appropriate for a narrative so dependent on the coexisting surface-level allure and desperate hustle of creating jealousy-worthy digital content.

All of the characters visiting Bali, like those staying in Thailand in the original, appear to enjoy access to unbelievably stylish modern bungalows; films exist concerning beach rescuers that don’t show off as much aerial pool video. These individuals must believably occupy these lush, far-flung locations to emphasize the uneasy irony of how often everyone — including the woman exacting revenge on the influencers’ narcissistic falseness — nonetheless devotes much time under the light of their screens.

Nuanced Portrayals and Tech-Savvy Tension

At the same time, Harder hasn’t authored a rant targeting the emptiness of the influencer industry. While it can be satisfying to watch CW exploit various online personalities, and a Hitchcockian sense of alignment lets us to wish she doesn’t get caught, the filmmaker is relatively sympathetic to the key influencer figures. In the first movie, he keyed into the loneliness Madison felt during ostensibly envy-worthy vacations. In this film, Harder seems to trust that merely watching Jacob in action will make it clear that he’s peddling snake-oil masculinity to other doofuses; he resists caricaturing the character. He even gives Jacob a degree of respect through depicting his true devotion to his partner; he is two-faced, but Ariana is a collaborator in his hypocrisy, not someone exploited by it.

The other side of this balanced approach means it may occasionally seem that he is acknowledging bits of contemporary digital culture without investigating them. This is especially true of the way he introduces artificial intelligence into the plot, a fascinating turn that lacks the psychological edge it deserves. The retitled sequel for the film could offer devotees of the original expectations of an Aliens-style ante-upping, and the film 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’ heavy use of actual places may also be what keeps it from coming across like pure nightmare fuel. The world might be saturated with content-churning influencers, online fraud, and exploitative travel, but reality itself remains present, for now.