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“Everything about this stinks like a cheap TV movie,” remarks an opportunistic podcaster midway through the chilling follow-up Influencers. At that point, his tone is dismissive in a calculated way toward an interviewee with an outlandish story he once said he trusted. But his assessment of the events on screen isn't inaccurate. Superficially, two streaming movies about a young woman who worms her way into the worlds of online influencers before killing them feels like the 21st-century equivalent of a tawdry but network-approved weekly TV movie. The wild thing regarding 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 that should give other movies a serious bout of FOMO.

Revisiting the First Film and Setting the Stage

The 2022 film Influencer follows the enigmatic CW (Cassandra Naud) as she quietly chooses solo-traveling social media targets, lures them to their doom, and covers up those deaths (at least temporarily) by taking control of their socials. The movie concludes (spoiler ahead) with CW marooned on an uninhabited island near the coast of Thailand, following her most recent mark, Madison (Emily Tennant), turns the tables against her.

This lends 2025's Influencers a degree of ambiguity, when returning filmmaker the director resumes with the character CW contentedly residing alongside her partner Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. On a journey marking their one-year anniversary, UK-based influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) draws CW’s eye and anger.

CW comments to Diane that a person ought to attempt stranding a phone-addicted influencer somewhere without any devices to see whether they can make it. Are we witnessing a backstory prequel? Did CW become extremist by seeing the preferential treatment given to a single clout-chaser?

Shifting Perspectives and Global Pursuits

The story’s perspective changes multiple times, ultimately revealing those introductory moments' place in the timeline. Harder catches up with Madison, now cleared of committing CW’s crimes, yet still encounters doubt regarding her version of the events, which includes the killing of her boyfriend. We also follow Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), living in Bali attempting to juice his career as half of a right-wing-influencer duo alongside Ariana (Veronica Long), although his chosen platform is bro-heavy streams, as opposed to the Instagram photos that normally attract CW’s attention.

The actor continues to be immensely captivating in her role, a role that appears particularly custom-fit for her talents. (She also designed CW's eye-catching wardrobe.) While the sequel’s screentime balance leans heavily into CW — the original seemed more balanced between her and Madison — it still functions as a tale of dueling amateur detectives, with both women both use fabricated profiles, Insta-stalking, and a seemingly limitless travel fund to pursue or evade one another. Then again, maybe the unlimited budget isn’t necessary. Influencers have a talent for gaining access to posh places at little cost, a skill which CW mirrors with her more overt scheming.

Ingenious Filmmaking and Cinematic Travelogue

The filmmakers behind Influencers appear equally resourceful in locating stunning locations to visit, though they were presumably more legitimate in their methods. The vast majority of the film seems to be shot on location, providing it an authentic gravity that lingers even as numerous sequences consist of a relatively small cast of people looking at digital devices.

It follows the same logic which allowed the James Bond movies look so consistently opulent for decades: Yes, big action and special effects can show off large spending, however just providing a travelogue of sorts for the audience also feels inherently cinematic. It’s also particularly appropriate for a narrative so dependent on the simultaneous surface-level allure and desperate hustle involved in producing envy-inducing online content.

Every character in Bali, like those staying in Thailand in the first film, appear to enjoy access to impossibly chic contemporary villas; films exist concerning beach rescuers which don't feature this much aerial pool video. The characters have to convincingly occupy these lush, 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 devices.

Nuanced Portrayals and Tech-Savvy Tension

Simultaneously, the director has not crafted a rant targeting the emptiness of online fame. While it can be gratifying to see CW manipulate different internet celebrities, and a Hitchcockian sense of alignment lets us to wish she doesn’t get caught, Harder is somewhat sympathetic to the key influencer figures. In the first movie, he keyed into the isolation Madison experienced while on supposedly dream getaways. In this film, Harder seems to trust that just observing Jacob in action will reveal that he is selling 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 partner; he is two-faced, yet Ariana is a collaborator in his double standards, not someone exploited of it.

The flip side of Harder’s even-keeled presentation means it may occasionally seem that he’s nodding at elements of modern online life without deeply exploring them further. This is especially true regarding how he brings AI into the plot, an intriguing development which misses the psychological edge it deserves. The retitled sequel for the film could offer fans of the first movie hope for a larger-scale ante-upping, and the movie ultimately delivers that, with an appropriately chaotic climax. But before that, it resembles more a polished Hitchcock thriller than an frenzied, technology-obsessed Brian De Palma thriller. Influencers’ heavy use of real-world locations may also be what prevents it from coming across like pure nightmare fuel. Our society may be overrun with always-online creators, online fraud, and exploitative travel, but the world itself remains present, for now.