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“The entire situation stinks of a cheap TV movie,” observes a cynical podcaster during the chilling follow-up Influencers. At that point, his tone is manipulatively dismissive toward an interviewee with an bizarre tale he once claimed he believed. But his description of the events in the movie isn't inaccurate. On its face, two films on demand chronicling a young woman who insinuates herself into the worlds of online influencers before killing them feels like the 21st-century equivalent of a lurid yet cable-ready Movie of the Week. The wild thing regarding Influencers remains just how superior it is compared to much of its competition, regardless of where you watch it. It’s the kind of suspense film capable of giving other movies a serious bout of FOMO.

Revisiting the First Film and Setting the Stage

The 2022 film Influencer tracks the enigmatic CW (Cassandra Naud) as she quietly chooses traveling alone influencer targets, entices them to their doom, and covers up those deaths (for a time) by seizing control of their online accounts. The movie 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 2025's Influencers some early ambiguity, as returning writer-director the director resumes with the character CW happily living alongside her partner Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. During a trip to celebrate their first anniversary, British influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) catches CW’s eye and ire.

CW remarks to her partner that a person ought to attempt leaving a device-obsessed influencer in a place with no technology to see whether they can make it. Are we witnessing an origin-story prequel? Was CW radicalized after witnessing the preferential treatment afforded a single fame-seeker?

Evolving Viewpoints and Global Pursuits

The narrative viewpoint changes multiple times, ultimately revealing those introductory moments' chronological position. Harder catches up with Madison, who has been exonerated for carrying out CW's offenses, but still faces doubt regarding her recounting of the events, including the murder of Madison’s boyfriend. We also follow Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), living in Bali and trying to juice his career as half of a right-wing-influencer power couple alongside Ariana (Veronica Long), although his chosen platform is bro-heavy streams, rather than the Instagram photos that typically attract CW’s attention.

Naud remains immensely captivating in her role, a role that appears particularly tailor-made for her talents. (She even created CW's eye-catching outfits.) Although the sequel’s screentime balance tips heavily toward CW — the original felt more equally divided between the two women — it still functions as a tale of rival amateur detectives, with both women both use fabricated profiles, Insta-stalking, and an apparently limitless travel fund to pursue or evade each other. Then again, maybe the unlimited budget aren't needed. Influencers have a knack for gaining access to luxurious locales without paying much, an ability that CW echoes through her more blatant scamming.

Resourceful Production and Cinematic Travelogue

The filmmakers behind Influencers seem similarly resourceful about finding beautiful places to film, though they were presumably less nefarious in their methods. Most of the film 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 digital devices.

It’s the same principle that made the James Bond movies appear so consistently opulent over the years: Indeed, explosive action and visual effects can show off a big budget, however simply offering a kind of visual tour for the audience also seems deeply filmic. This is particularly appropriate for a story so rooted in the simultaneous surface-level allure and desperate hustle involved in producing envy-inducing online content.

All of the characters visiting Bali, similar to those staying in Thailand in the first film, seem to have entry to impossibly chic modern bungalows; there are movies about lifeguards that don’t show off this much overhead swimming-pool video. The characters have to convincingly occupy these lush, far-flung locations to highlight the uncomfortable paradox of how frequently everyone — including the woman wreaking vengeance upon the online stars' self-centered phoniness — nonetheless spends plenty of time in the glow of their screens.

Balanced Depictions and Tech-Savvy Tension

Simultaneously, Harder hasn’t authored a screed against the emptiness of the influencer industry. While it can be gratifying to see CW exploit different internet celebrities, and a sense reminiscent of Hitchcock of alignment lets us to wish she evades capture, the filmmaker is relatively understanding of the major influencer characters. Previously, he tapped into the loneliness Madison felt during ostensibly dream getaways. In this film, Harder seems to trust that just observing Jacob at work will make it clear that he’s peddling snake-oil masculinity to other doofuses; he resists turning into a caricature the character further. He even gives Jacob a measure of dignity by showing his true devotion to his girlfriend; he’s a hypocrite, but Ariana is a collaborator in his hypocrisy, not a victim of it.

The other side of this balanced approach means it may occasionally seem that he’s nodding at elements of modern online life without investigating them further. This is especially true regarding how he brings AI into the plot, a fascinating turn which misses the psychological edge it should have. The retitled sequel of Influencers might give fans of the first movie hope for an Aliens-style ante-upping, and the movie does eventually provide exactly that, with an appropriately chaotic climax. But before that, it’s more like a polished Hitchcock thriller than a wild-eyed, technology-obsessed Brian De Palma thriller. Influencers’ heavy use of actual places might also be what keeps it from seeming like pure nightmare fuel. Our society may be overrun with always-online creators, digital deception, and exploitative travel, but the world itself is still here, for now.