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“The entire situation stinks like a bad made-for-TV,” observes an opportunistic podcaster during the chilling follow-up Influencers. At that point, he’s being manipulatively dismissive of a guest whose bizarre tale he previously said he trusted. But his description of the events on screen isn't inaccurate. Superficially, a pair of streaming movies 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 yet cable-ready weekly TV movie. The wild thing regarding Influencers is just how superior it is compared to much of the competition, irrespective of screen size. It is precisely the thriller that should give its peers a bad case of FOMO.

Recapping the First Film and Setting the Stage

2022’s Influencer follows the enigmatic CW (Cassandra Naud) while she quietly chooses solo-traveling influencer targets, lures them to their doom, and covers up those murders (for a time) by seizing control of their socials. The film leaves off (spoiler ahead) with CW marooned on an uninhabited island near the coast of Thailand, after her most recent mark, Madison (Emily Tennant), reverses their roles against her.

This lends 2025's Influencers some early ambiguity, when returning writer-director Kurtis David Harder resumes with CW contentedly residing alongside her partner Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. On a journey to celebrate the couple’s one-year anniversary, UK-based influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) draws CW’s eye and anger.

CW remarks to Diane that a person ought to attempt stranding a phone-addicted online personality in a place without any devices to see if they can survive. Is this an origin-story prequel? Was CW radicalized after witnessing the preferential treatment given to a single fame-seeker?

Shifting Perspectives and International Chases

The story’s perspective changes multiple times, eventually clarifying those early scenes’ chronological position. The story revisits Madison, who has been cleared of committing CW's offenses, yet still encounters suspicion regarding her version of the events, which includes the murder of her boyfriend. The film also follows Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), living in Bali and trying to boost his profile as part of a conservative-influencer power couple alongside Ariana (Veronica Long), though his preferred medium involves masculine-focused livestreams, as opposed to the curated images that typically attract CW’s attention.

The actor continues to be immensely captivating in her role, which seems especially tailor-made to her strengths. (She even created CW's eye-catching outfits.) Although the sequel’s screentime balance leans heavily into CW — the first film seemed more balanced between her and Madison — it still functions as a tale of rival amateur detectives, with both women employ fabricated profiles, social media surveillance, and a seemingly unlimited travel budget to chase and/or escape each other. Of course, maybe the vast resources aren't needed. Online personalities possess a knack for getting to explore posh places at little cost, an ability which CW mirrors with her more overt scheming.

Ingenious Filmmaking and Visual Wanderlust

The creative team for Influencers seem similarly resourceful about finding stunning locations to visit, though they were likely less nefarious in their methods. The vast majority of the movie seems to be shot on location, providing it a real-world weight that lingers even as many scenes involve a handful of actors of characters looking at digital devices.

It’s the same principle that made the Bond franchise appear so persistently lavish over the years: Indeed, explosive action and special effects can show off a big budget, but just providing a kind of visual tour for the audience also seems deeply filmic. This is particularly appropriate for a narrative so dependent on the coexisting surface-level allure and try-hard grind of creating envy-inducing online content.

All of the characters visiting Bali, similar to those who were in Thailand in the original, seem to have access to impossibly chic modern bungalows; there are movies concerning beach rescuers that don’t show off as much overhead swimming-pool video. These individuals must believably occupy these lush, remote places to highlight the uncomfortable paradox of how often everyone — including the woman exacting revenge upon the online stars' self-centered phoniness — nevertheless spends plenty of time in the glow of their devices.

Nuanced Portrayals and Tech-Savvy Tension

At the same time, Harder hasn’t authored a screed targeting the vacuousness of the influencer industry. Though it can be gratifying to see CW manipulate various online personalities, and a Hitchcockian sense of identification allows us to wish she doesn’t get caught, Harder is relatively sympathetic to 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 in action will make it clear that he is selling snake-oil masculinity to other doofuses; he avoids turning into a caricature the character further. He even gives Jacob a measure of dignity by showing his true devotion to his partner; he is two-faced, yet Ariana is a collaborator in his double standards, not a victim by it.

The other side of this balanced approach is that it can sometimes appear as if he’s nodding at bits of contemporary digital culture without investigating them further. This is especially true of the way he brings AI into the plot, an intriguing development that lacks the psychosexual kick it deserves. The retitled sequel of Influencers could offer fans of the first movie expectations of a larger-scale escalation, and the film ultimately delivers that, with a suitably chaotic climax. However, initially, it’s more like a sleek Hitchcock thriller than an frenzied, tech-addled Brian De Palma thriller. Influencers’ heavy use of actual places might also be what keeps it from coming across like utter horror. Our society may be overrun with content-churning influencers, digital deception, and self-serving tourism, but the world itself remains present, at least for now.