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“This whole affair smells of a bad made-for-TV,” observes a cynical commentator during the chilling follow-up Influencers. At that point, he’s being manipulatively dismissive toward an interviewee with an bizarre tale he previously said he trusted. Yet his description of what’s happening on screen isn’t wrong. On its face, two streaming movies about a young woman who worms her way into the worlds of online influencers and then murders them feels like a modern-day version of a lurid but cable-ready weekly TV movie. The surprising aspect about Influencers is how much better it is compared to much of its competition, irrespective of where you watch it. It is precisely the thriller capable of giving its peers a bad case of FOMO.

Revisiting the Original and Establishing the Scene

The 2022 film Influencer follows the enigmatic CW (Cassandra Naud) while she methodically selects traveling alone influencer targets, lures them to their deaths, and conceals those murders (for a time) by taking control of their online accounts. The movie leaves off (spoiler ahead) with CW marooned on a deserted island near the coast of Thailand, following her most recent mark, Madison (Emily Tennant), reverses their roles on her.

This lends 2025's Influencers some early mystery, as returning filmmaker the director resumes with the character CW contentedly residing with her girlfriend Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. On a journey marking their first anniversary, UK-based influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) catches CW's attention and anger.

CW comments to Diane that someone should try leaving a device-obsessed online personality somewhere without any devices and see if they can make it. Is this a backstory prequel? Did CW become extremist after witnessing the preferential treatment afforded one clout-chaser?

Evolving Viewpoints and International Chases

The narrative viewpoint shifts several more times, eventually clarifying those introductory moments' place in the timeline. Harder catches up with Madison, who has been cleared of carrying out CW's offenses, yet still encounters doubt regarding her recounting of the events, including the killing of her boyfriend. The film also follows Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), living in Bali and trying to juice his career as half of a right-wing-influencer power couple with Ariana (Veronica Long), though his preferred medium is bro-heavy streams, as opposed to the Instagram photos that typically attract CW’s attention.

Naud remains immensely captivating in her role, which seems especially tailor-made for her talents. (She even created CW's striking wardrobe.) 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 story of rival investigators, with both women both use fake accounts, social media surveillance, and an apparently limitless travel fund to pursue and/or escape one another. Of course, maybe the vast resources isn’t necessary. Influencers have a knack for getting to explore posh places at little cost, a skill that CW echoes with her more overt scamming.

Ingenious Filmmaking and Cinematic Travelogue

The creative team for Influencers seem similarly resourceful about finding beautiful places to film, though they were likely more legitimate in their methods. Most of the film appears to be shot on location, providing it a real-world weight that lingers even when numerous sequences consist of a relatively small cast of people looking at computer or phone screens.

It’s the same principle which allowed the Bond franchise appear so consistently opulent for decades: Indeed, big action and special effects can show off a big budget, but simply offering a travelogue of sorts for the audience also feels inherently cinematic. It’s also especially fitting for a story so dependent on the coexisting superficial glamour and desperate hustle of creating jealousy-worthy online content.

Every character in Bali, like those who were in Thailand in the first film, seem to have access to unbelievably stylish modern bungalows; there are movies about lifeguards that don’t show off as much overhead swimming-pool video. The characters must believably inhabit these lush, far-flung locations to highlight the uncomfortable paradox of how frequently each person — including the woman exacting revenge upon the online stars' self-centered phoniness — nevertheless spends plenty of time in the glow of their devices.

Balanced Depictions and Digital-Age Suspense

Simultaneously, Harder hasn’t authored a rant targeting the vacuousness of the influencer industry. Though it is gratifying to watch CW manipulate various online personalities, and a sense reminiscent of Hitchcock of alignment lets us to hope she evades capture, the filmmaker is somewhat sympathetic to the key influencer figures. In the first movie, he keyed into the loneliness Madison experienced during supposedly envy-worthy vacations. Here, Harder seems to trust that merely watching Jacob at work will reveal that he is selling snake-oil masculinity to other gullible men; 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’s a hypocrite, yet Ariana is a collaborator in his hypocrisy, not a victim by it.

The other side of this balanced approach is that it can sometimes appear as if he’s nodding at elements of modern online life without investigating them. This is particularly evident regarding how he brings AI into the story, a fascinating turn that lacks the psychosexual kick it deserves. The pluralized title for the film could offer devotees of the original hope for a larger-scale ante-upping, and the movie does eventually provide exactly that, with an appropriately chaotic climax. But before that, it resembles more a sleek Hitchcock thriller than a wild-eyed, tech-addled Brian De Palma thriller. Influencers’ extensive use of real-world locations may also be what keeps it from coming across like pure nightmare fuel. Our society may be overrun with always-online creators, online fraud, and self-serving tourism, but reality itself remains present, at least for now.