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“This whole affair stinks like a bad TV movie,” states an opportunistic podcaster during the chilling follow-up Influencers. In the moment, his tone is dismissive in a calculated way of a guest with an outlandish story he previously claimed he believed. Yet his description of what’s happening in the movie isn't inaccurate. On its face, a pair of films on demand chronicling a young woman who worms her way into the worlds of social media stars before killing them seems like a modern-day version of a tawdry but network-approved Movie of the Week. The surprising aspect about Influencers remains just how superior it is than plenty of its competition, irrespective of screen size. It is precisely the suspense film capable of giving other movies a bad case of FOMO.

Recapping the First Film and Establishing the Scene

The 2022 film Influencer follows the enigmatic CW (Cassandra Naud) while she methodically selects traveling alone influencer targets, entices them to their deaths, and conceals those murders (at least temporarily) by taking control of their socials. The film concludes (spoiler ahead) with CW stranded on an uninhabited island near the coast of Thailand, after her latest target, Madison (Emily Tennant), reverses their roles on her.

This lends 2025's Influencers a degree of mystery, when returning filmmaker the director picks up with CW happily living with her girlfriend Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. During a trip marking their one-year anniversary, British influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) catches CW's attention and ire.

CW comments to Diane that someone should try leaving a device-obsessed influencer in a place without any devices and see if they can survive. Are we witnessing a backstory prequel? Was CW radicalized after witnessing the special treatment given to a single clout-chaser?

Evolving Viewpoints 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 committing CW's offenses, but still faces suspicion regarding her recounting of what happened, which includes the killing of her boyfriend. The film also follows Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), based in Bali and trying to juice his career as part of a conservative-influencer duo with Ariana (Veronica Long), although his chosen platform involves masculine-focused livestreams, rather than the curated images that normally attract CW's interest.

The actor continues to be terrifically magnetic in her role, which seems particularly custom-fit to her strengths. (She also designed CW's eye-catching outfits.) While the follow-up's screentime balance leans heavily into CW — the original seemed more balanced between her and Madison — it still functions as a story of dueling amateur detectives, as Madison and CW both use fake accounts, Insta-stalking, and a seemingly unlimited travel budget to pursue and/or escape one another. Then again, maybe the vast resources aren't needed. Online personalities possess a talent for gaining access to luxurious locales at little cost, a skill that CW echoes with her more overt scamming.

Ingenious Filmmaking and Cinematic Travelogue

The creative team for Influencers appear equally resourceful in locating beautiful places to visit, though they were likely more legitimate about it. The vast majority of the film seems to be shot on location, providing it a real-world weight that remains even when numerous sequences involve a relatively small cast of characters looking at computer or phone screens.

It follows the same logic that made the Bond franchise look so persistently lavish over the years: Indeed, big action and special effects can show off a big budget, but just providing a travelogue of sorts for the audience also feels deeply filmic. It’s also especially fitting for a narrative so rooted in the coexisting surface-level allure and desperate hustle of creating jealousy-worthy digital content.

Every character in Bali, similar to those who were in Thailand in the first film, appear to enjoy access to impossibly chic contemporary villas; films exist concerning beach rescuers which don't feature as much overhead swimming-pool video. These individuals have to convincingly occupy these luxurious, far-flung locations to highlight the uneasy irony of how often each person — including the woman wreaking vengeance upon the online stars' self-centered phoniness — nonetheless devotes much time in the glow of their screens.

Nuanced Portrayals and Tech-Savvy Tension

Simultaneously, Harder hasn’t authored a rant against the emptiness of the influencer industry. While it is satisfying to see CW exploit different internet celebrities, and a Hitchcockian sense of alignment allows us to wish she doesn’t get caught, Harder is relatively understanding of the major influencer characters. In the first movie, he tapped into the loneliness Madison felt while on supposedly envy-worthy vacations. In this film, the director appears confident that just observing Jacob at work will reveal that he is selling snake-oil masculinity to other gullible men; he resists caricaturing the character further. He even grants Jacob a degree of respect through depicting his genuine loyalty to his girlfriend; he’s a hypocrite, yet Ariana is a partner in his hypocrisy, not someone exploited by it.

The other side of this balanced approach is that it can sometimes appear that he’s nodding at bits 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 deserves. The retitled sequel for the film could offer fans of the first movie expectations of a larger-scale escalation, and the film ultimately delivers that, with an appropriately chaotic climax. However, initially, it resembles more a sleek Alfred Hitchcock movie than a wild-eyed, tech-addled De Palma-style shocker. Influencers’ extensive use of real-world locations might also be what prevents it from coming across like pure nightmare fuel. The world might be saturated with always-online creators, digital deception, and exploitative travel, but the world itself remains present, at least for now.