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“Everything about this reeks like a bad TV movie,” remarks a cynical podcaster during the chilling follow-up Influencers. In the moment, his tone is dismissive in a calculated way of a guest whose bizarre tale he once said he trusted. But his description of what’s happening in the movie isn’t wrong. On its face, a pair of films on demand about a young woman who worms her way into the lives of online influencers and then murders them feels like the 21st-century equivalent of a lurid yet cable-ready Movie of the Week. The surprising aspect about Influencers remains how much better it proves to be compared to much of the competition, regardless of where you watch it. It’s the kind of thriller capable of giving its peers a serious bout of FOMO.

Revisiting the Original and Setting the Stage

The 2022 film Influencer tracks the enigmatic CW (Cassandra Naud) as she quietly chooses solo-traveling social media targets, entices them to their deaths, and conceals those deaths (at least temporarily) by seizing control of their socials. The movie leaves off (spoiler ahead) with CW stranded on a deserted island near the coast of Thailand, after her most recent mark, Madison (Emily Tennant), turns the tables against her.

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

CW comments to her partner that someone should try stranding a device-obsessed online personality somewhere without any devices and see whether they can survive. Is this a backstory prequel? Did CW become extremist by seeing the preferential treatment given to a single fame-seeker?

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, who has been exonerated for carrying out CW’s crimes, yet still encounters suspicion over her recounting of the events, including the murder of Madison’s boyfriend. The film also follows Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), living in Bali and trying to juice his career as half of a right-wing-influencer duo alongside Ariana (Veronica Long), though his preferred medium involves masculine-focused livestreams, as opposed to the curated images that typically attract CW’s attention.

Naud remains immensely captivating in her role, a role that appears particularly custom-fit to her strengths. (She even created CW's eye-catching wardrobe.) While the sequel’s screentime balance leans heavily into CW — the original felt more equally divided between her and Madison — it still works as a tale of rival amateur detectives, as Madison and CW employ fabricated profiles, social media surveillance, and an apparently unlimited travel budget to chase and/or escape one another. Of course, maybe the unlimited budget aren't needed. Online personalities possess a knack for getting to explore posh places without paying much, a skill which CW mirrors through her more blatant scheming.

Ingenious Filmmaking and Cinematic Travelogue

The filmmakers behind Influencers appear equally resourceful about finding beautiful places to visit, though they were presumably less nefarious about it. Most of the film appears to be shot on location, providing it a real-world weight that lingers even as many scenes consist of a handful of actors of characters staring at computer or phone screens.

It’s the same principle which allowed the Bond franchise look so persistently lavish for decades: Yes, big action and visual effects can show off large spending, however just providing a kind of visual tour to viewers also feels deeply filmic. This is especially fitting for a story so dependent on the coexisting superficial glamour and desperate hustle of creating envy-inducing online content.

All of the characters visiting Bali, similar to those staying in Thailand in the original, seem to have entry to unbelievably stylish contemporary villas; films exist concerning beach rescuers which don't feature as much aerial pool video. The characters must believably occupy these luxurious, remote places to emphasize the uncomfortable paradox of how often everyone — including the woman wreaking vengeance on the influencers’ self-centered phoniness — nonetheless devotes much time under the light of their devices.

Nuanced Portrayals and Tech-Savvy Tension

At the same time, Harder hasn’t authored a rant against the emptiness of the influencer industry. While it is gratifying to watch CW exploit different internet celebrities, and a Hitchcockian sense of identification lets 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 loneliness Madison felt during ostensibly dream getaways. In this film, Harder seems to trust that merely watching Jacob at work will make it clear that he is selling false masculinity to other doofuses; he avoids caricaturing the character further. He even grants Jacob a measure of dignity through depicting his genuine loyalty to his partner; he is two-faced, but Ariana is a collaborator in his hypocrisy, not someone exploited by it.

The flip side of this balanced approach is that it may occasionally seem that he is acknowledging bits of contemporary digital culture without investigating them. This is particularly evident regarding how he brings AI into the plot, an intriguing development that lacks the psychosexual kick it deserves. The pluralized title of Influencers might give fans of the first movie hope for an Aliens-style ante-upping, and the film ultimately delivers that, with an appropriately wild final act. However, initially, it’s more like a sleek Alfred Hitchcock movie than a wild-eyed, technology-obsessed Brian De Palma thriller. Influencers’ heavy use of real-world locations may also be what keeps it from coming across like utter horror. Our society might be saturated with always-online creators, digital deception, and self-serving tourism, but reality itself remains present, at least for now.