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“Everything about this reeks like a cheap TV movie,” observes an opportunistic commentator midway through the chilling follow-up Influencers. At that point, his tone is dismissive in a calculated way of a guest with an bizarre tale he once claimed he believed. But his description of the events in the movie isn’t wrong. Superficially, a pair of films on demand about a woman who worms her way into the worlds of online influencers before killing them feels like a modern-day version of a tawdry but cable-ready Movie of the Week. The wild thing regarding Influencers remains how much better it proves to be than plenty of its competition, irrespective of where you watch it. It is precisely the thriller that should give other movies a serious bout of FOMO.

Revisiting the Original and Establishing the Scene

The 2022 film Influencer tracks the mysterious CW (Cassandra Naud) while she quietly chooses traveling alone social media targets, entices them to their doom, and covers up those murders (at least temporarily) by taking control of their socials. The movie leaves off (spoiler ahead) with CW stranded on an uninhabited island near the coast of Thailand, after her most recent mark, Madison (Emily Tennant), turns the tables on her.

This lends the 2025 Influencers a degree of mystery, when returning writer-director the director picks up with CW contentedly residing 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 ire.

CW remarks to her partner that a person should try leaving a device-obsessed influencer somewhere with no technology and see whether they can survive. Are we witnessing a backstory prequel? Was CW radicalized by seeing the special treatment given to a single fame-seeker?

Shifting Perspectives and International Chases

The narrative viewpoint changes multiple times, ultimately revealing those introductory moments' chronological position. Harder catches up with Madison, who has been cleared of carrying out CW’s crimes, but still faces doubt regarding her recounting of what happened, which includes the killing 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 duo alongside Ariana (Veronica Long), although his preferred medium involves masculine-focused livestreams, as opposed to the curated images that normally attract CW’s attention.

The actor continues to be terrifically magnetic in her role, a role that appears especially custom-fit for her talents. (She also designed CW's striking outfits.) While the follow-up's screentime balance tips heavily toward CW — the original felt more equally divided between her and Madison — it still functions as a story of dueling amateur detectives, with both women employ fake accounts, Insta-stalking, and an apparently limitless travel fund to chase or evade one another. Then again, maybe the unlimited budget isn’t necessary. Influencers have a talent for gaining access to luxurious locales without paying much, a skill which CW mirrors with her more overt scamming.

Ingenious Filmmaking and Visual Wanderlust

The creative team for Influencers seem similarly ingenious about finding stunning locations to visit, though they were likely less nefarious about it. The vast majority of the movie seems to be shot on location, giving it an authentic gravity that remains even as numerous sequences involve a handful of actors of characters staring at computer or phone screens.

It’s the same principle which allowed the James Bond movies appear so persistently lavish over the years: Indeed, explosive action and visual effects can show off a big budget, but simply offering a travelogue of sorts to viewers also seems deeply filmic. It’s also particularly appropriate for a narrative so dependent on the simultaneous surface-level allure and try-hard grind of creating envy-inducing digital content.

All of the characters in Bali, like those who were in Thailand in the original, appear to enjoy entry to unbelievably stylish contemporary villas; films exist concerning beach rescuers which don't feature as much overhead swimming-pool video. The characters have to convincingly inhabit these luxurious, remote places to emphasize the uncomfortable paradox of how often each person — even the woman exacting revenge on the influencers’ narcissistic falseness — nevertheless devotes much time under the light of their devices.

Nuanced Portrayals and Digital-Age Suspense

Simultaneously, Harder hasn’t authored a screed against the vacuousness of the influencer industry. While it is gratifying to watch CW manipulate different internet celebrities, and a sense reminiscent of Hitchcock of identification lets us to wish she doesn’t get caught, Harder is relatively understanding of the major influencer characters. Previously, he tapped into the loneliness Madison felt while on ostensibly envy-worthy vacations. Here, Harder seems to trust that merely watching Jacob in action will make it clear that he is selling false masculinity to other gullible men; he avoids caricaturing the character. He even grants Jacob a measure of dignity through depicting his true devotion to his girlfriend; he is two-faced, but Ariana is a partner in his hypocrisy, not a victim by it.

The other side of Harder’s even-keeled presentation is that it may occasionally seem as if he’s nodding at bits of modern online life without investigating them. This is particularly evident of the way he introduces artificial intelligence into the plot, an intriguing development that lacks the psychological edge it should have. The retitled sequel of Influencers might give fans of the first movie hope for an Aliens-style escalation, and the movie ultimately delivers exactly that, with an appropriately wild final act. However, initially, it’s more like a sleek Alfred Hitchcock movie than an wild-eyed, tech-addled Brian De Palma thriller. Influencers’ heavy use of actual places might also be what prevents it from seeming like utter horror. Our society may be overrun with always-online creators, digital deception, and exploitative travel, but reality itself is still here, at least for now.