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“This whole affair reeks like a bad made-for-TV,” states an opportunistic podcaster midway through the chilling follow-up Influencers. At that point, he’s being dismissive in a calculated way of a guest with an outlandish story he previously said he trusted. Yet his assessment of what’s happening in the movie isn't inaccurate. Superficially, two streaming movies about a woman who worms her way into the worlds of social media stars before killing them seems like a modern-day version of a tawdry yet network-approved weekly TV movie. The wild thing regarding Influencers is just how superior it proves to be compared to much of its competition, regardless of screen size. It is precisely the thriller that should give its peers a bad case of FOMO.

Recapping the Original and Establishing the Scene

The 2022 film Influencer follows the mysterious CW (Cassandra Naud) while she quietly chooses traveling alone influencer targets, entices them to their deaths, and conceals those deaths (for a time) by taking control of their socials. The film leaves off (spoiler ahead) with CW marooned on an uninhabited island off the coast of Thailand, following her latest target, Madison (Emily Tennant), reverses their roles against her.

This provides 2025's Influencers a degree of mystery, when returning filmmaker the director picks up 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 a person ought to attempt stranding a device-obsessed influencer somewhere with no technology to see whether they can make it. Are we witnessing an origin-story prequel? Did CW become extremist after witnessing the preferential treatment afforded one fame-seeker?

Shifting Perspectives and International Chases

The story’s perspective shifts several more times, ultimately revealing those early scenes’ place in the timeline. The story revisits Madison, who has been exonerated for carrying out CW’s crimes, yet still encounters doubt over her version of the events, including the killing of her boyfriend. We also follow Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), based in Bali and trying to boost his profile as half of a right-wing-influencer power couple with Ariana (Veronica Long), although his chosen platform is bro-heavy streams, rather than the curated images that typically capture CW's interest.

Naud remains terrifically magnetic in the part, which seems particularly tailor-made to her strengths. (She even created CW's eye-catching wardrobe.) While the follow-up's focus leans heavily into CW — the first film seemed more balanced between her and Madison — it still works as a story of dueling amateur detectives, with both women both use fabricated profiles, Insta-stalking, and a seemingly limitless travel fund to chase or evade each other. Of course, perhaps the vast resources aren't needed. Influencers have a knack for getting to explore luxurious locales at little cost, an ability that CW echoes with her more overt scheming.

Ingenious Filmmaking and Visual Wanderlust

The filmmakers behind Influencers seem similarly resourceful about finding stunning locations to film, though they were likely more legitimate about it. The vast majority of the movie seems to be filmed in real places, giving it an authentic gravity that lingers even as many scenes involve a handful of actors of people looking at digital devices.

It follows the same logic that made the James Bond movies look so consistently opulent for decades: Yes, explosive action and special 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 narrative so rooted in the coexisting superficial glamour and try-hard grind involved in producing envy-inducing online content.

All of the characters in Bali, similar to those staying in Thailand in the first film, seem to have entry to impossibly chic contemporary villas; there are movies about lifeguards which don't feature this much overhead swimming-pool video. The characters have to convincingly occupy these luxurious, far-flung locations to emphasize the uneasy irony of how often everyone — even the woman exacting revenge on the influencers’ self-centered phoniness — nonetheless devotes much time under the light of their devices.

Nuanced Portrayals and Digital-Age Suspense

Simultaneously, the director has not crafted a rant targeting the emptiness of online fame. While it is gratifying to see CW manipulate various online personalities, and a Hitchcockian sense of alignment allows us to wish she evades capture, the filmmaker is relatively sympathetic to the key influencer figures. Previously, he tapped into the loneliness Madison experienced while on ostensibly envy-worthy vacations. In this film, Harder seems to trust that merely watching Jacob in action will make it clear that he’s peddling snake-oil masculinity to other doofuses; he resists caricaturing the character. He even grants Jacob a measure of dignity through depicting his genuine loyalty to his girlfriend; he is two-faced, yet Ariana is a collaborator in his double standards, not a victim by it.

The flip side of this balanced approach means it may occasionally seem that he’s nodding at bits of modern online life without investigating them further. This is especially true of the way he introduces artificial intelligence into the story, an intriguing development that lacks the psychological edge it should have. The pluralized title of Influencers could offer devotees of the original expectations of an Aliens-style ante-upping, and the film ultimately delivers exactly that, with an appropriately wild final act. However, initially, it’s more like a polished Alfred Hitchcock movie than a wild-eyed, technology-obsessed Brian De Palma thriller. Influencers’ heavy use of actual places may also be what prevents it from coming across like pure nightmare fuel. Our society might be saturated with always-online creators, online fraud, and self-serving tourism, but reality itself is still here, at least for now.