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“This whole affair reeks of a cheap made-for-TV,” states an opportunistic commentator during the chilling follow-up Influencers. In the moment, he’s being manipulatively dismissive toward an interviewee whose bizarre tale he once said he trusted. But his description of the events in the movie isn't inaccurate. Superficially, two streaming movies about a woman who worms her way into the lives of social media stars before killing them seems like the 21st-century equivalent of a tawdry yet cable-ready Movie of the Week. The wild thing regarding Influencers is just how superior it proves to be than plenty of its competition, irrespective of screen size. It’s the kind of thriller capable of giving its peers a serious bout of FOMO.

Revisiting the Original and Setting the Stage

2022’s Influencer follows the enigmatic CW (Cassandra Naud) while she quietly chooses traveling alone influencer targets, lures them to their doom, and covers up those murders (for a time) by seizing control of their online accounts. The film leaves off (spoiler ahead) with CW marooned on an uninhabited island near the coast of Thailand, after her latest target, Madison (Emily Tennant), turns the tables on her.

This lends 2025's Influencers a degree of mystery, as returning filmmaker the director resumes with CW happily living alongside her partner Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. During a trip marking the couple’s first anniversary, UK-based influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) draws CW’s eye and ire.

CW remarks to Diane that someone should try leaving a phone-addicted influencer in a place with no technology to see if they can survive. Is this a backstory prequel? Was CW radicalized by seeing the preferential treatment given to a single fame-seeker?

Evolving Viewpoints and International Chases

The narrative viewpoint changes multiple times, ultimately revealing those introductory moments' chronological position. The story revisits Madison, now exonerated for committing CW's offenses, but still faces suspicion regarding her version of what happened, which includes the murder of her boyfriend. The film also follows Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), living in Bali attempting to juice his career as half of a right-wing-influencer duo alongside Ariana (Veronica Long), though his chosen platform involves masculine-focused livestreams, as opposed to the curated images that typically capture CW’s attention.

The actor continues to be immensely captivating in the part, a role that appears especially custom-fit to her strengths. (She even created CW's eye-catching outfits.) Although the follow-up's screentime balance tips heavily toward CW — the first film seemed more balanced between her and Madison — it still works as a story of rival amateur detectives, with both women both use fake accounts, social media surveillance, and an apparently unlimited travel budget to chase and/or escape each other. Then again, perhaps the unlimited budget aren't needed. Influencers have a talent for gaining access to posh places without paying much, a skill which CW mirrors with her more overt scheming.

Ingenious Filmmaking and Cinematic Travelogue

The creative team for Influencers seem similarly resourceful about finding stunning locations to visit, though they were likely less nefarious in their methods. Most of the film appears to be shot on location, providing it a real-world weight that remains even as many scenes consist of a handful of actors of characters staring at computer or phone screens.

It follows the same logic that made the James Bond movies look so persistently lavish over the years: Indeed, explosive action and special effects can display a big budget, however simply offering a kind of visual tour to viewers also feels deeply filmic. This is particularly appropriate for a narrative so dependent on the coexisting superficial glamour and desperate hustle involved in producing envy-inducing online content.

Every character visiting Bali, like those staying in Thailand in the first film, appear to enjoy access to impossibly chic modern bungalows; films exist about lifeguards which don't feature as much aerial pool footage. The characters have to convincingly occupy these luxurious, remote places to highlight the uncomfortable paradox of how often each person — including the woman wreaking vengeance upon the online stars' self-centered phoniness — nonetheless spends plenty of time in the glow of their devices.

Nuanced Portrayals and Digital-Age Suspense

Simultaneously, Harder hasn’t authored a rant against the emptiness of the influencer industry. While it can be satisfying to watch CW manipulate various online personalities, and a sense reminiscent of Hitchcock of identification allows us to hope she doesn’t get caught, Harder is somewhat sympathetic to the major influencer characters. In the first movie, he tapped into the isolation Madison experienced while on supposedly envy-worthy vacations. In this film, the director appears confident that merely watching Jacob at work 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 measure of dignity through depicting his genuine loyalty to his girlfriend; he’s a hypocrite, 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 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 psychosexual kick it deserves. The pluralized title of Influencers could offer fans of the first movie hope for an Aliens-style escalation, and the film does eventually provide that, with a suitably chaotic climax. However, initially, it’s more like a polished Hitchcock thriller than a wild-eyed, technology-obsessed Brian De Palma thriller. Influencers’ extensive use of actual places might also be what keeps it from seeming like utter horror. The world may be overrun with content-churning influencers, online fraud, and self-serving tourism, but the world itself remains present, at least for now.