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“Everything about this reeks of a bad made-for-TV,” remarks an opportunistic podcaster during the chilling follow-up Influencers. In the moment, he’s being dismissive in a calculated way of a guest with an outlandish story he previously said he trusted. Yet his description of the events in the movie isn't inaccurate. Superficially, two streaming movies about a woman who insinuates herself into the lives of social media stars and then murders them feels like a modern-day version of a tawdry but network-approved weekly TV movie. The surprising aspect about Influencers remains how much better it proves to be than plenty of the competition, regardless of where you watch it. It’s the kind of thriller capable of giving other movies a serious bout of FOMO.

Revisiting the First Film and Establishing the Scene

2022’s Influencer tracks the enigmatic CW (Cassandra Naud) while she methodically selects solo-traveling influencer targets, lures them to their deaths, and conceals those deaths (for a time) by taking control of their online accounts. The movie concludes (spoiler ahead) with CW marooned on an uninhabited island off the coast of Thailand, after her latest target, Madison (Emily Tennant), reverses their roles against her.

This provides 2025's Influencers some early mystery, as returning filmmaker Kurtis David Harder picks up with CW contentedly residing with her girlfriend Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. During a trip to celebrate the couple’s one-year anniversary, British influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) draws CW’s eye and ire.

CW remarks to Diane that a person should try leaving a phone-addicted influencer in a place with no technology and see if they can make it. Are we witnessing an origin-story prequel? Was CW radicalized by seeing the preferential treatment afforded a single fame-seeker?

Evolving Viewpoints and Global Pursuits

The story’s perspective changes multiple times, eventually clarifying those early scenes’ chronological position. Harder catches up with Madison, now exonerated for committing CW's offenses, yet still encounters suspicion regarding her recounting of what happened, which includes the killing of her boyfriend. The film also follows Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), living in Bali attempting to juice his career as part of a conservative-influencer power couple alongside Ariana (Veronica Long), although his chosen platform is bro-heavy streams, rather than the curated images that normally capture CW’s attention.

The actor continues to be immensely captivating in her role, which seems particularly tailor-made to her strengths. (She even created CW's striking wardrobe.) While 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 both use fabricated profiles, Insta-stalking, and a seemingly unlimited travel budget to pursue and/or escape each other. Then again, perhaps the vast resources isn’t necessary. Online personalities possess a talent for getting to explore posh places at little cost, a skill which CW mirrors through her more blatant scamming.

Ingenious Filmmaking and Cinematic Travelogue

The creative team for Influencers appear equally ingenious about finding beautiful places to film, although they were presumably less nefarious about it. Most of the movie seems to be filmed in real places, providing it a real-world weight that lingers even when many scenes involve a relatively small cast of characters looking at digital devices.

It’s the same principle which allowed the Bond franchise look so consistently opulent for decades: Indeed, big action and special effects can display a big budget, but just providing a travelogue of sorts to viewers also feels inherently cinematic. It’s also particularly appropriate for a story so rooted in the simultaneous surface-level allure and try-hard grind of creating jealousy-worthy digital content.

All of the characters in Bali, like those who were in Thailand in the original, appear to enjoy entry to unbelievably stylish contemporary villas; there are movies concerning beach rescuers that don’t show off as much aerial pool footage. The characters have to convincingly occupy these lush, far-flung locations to highlight the uneasy irony of how often everyone — including the woman exacting revenge on the influencers’ self-centered phoniness — nonetheless spends plenty of time in the glow of their devices.

Balanced Depictions and Tech-Savvy Tension

Simultaneously, Harder hasn’t authored a rant targeting the emptiness of online fame. While it is satisfying to watch CW exploit different internet celebrities, and a sense reminiscent of Hitchcock of alignment lets us to hope she doesn’t get caught, Harder is somewhat understanding of the major influencer characters. In the first movie, he keyed into the loneliness Madison felt while on supposedly envy-worthy vacations. Here, Harder seems to trust that just observing Jacob at work will reveal that he is selling snake-oil masculinity to other doofuses; he resists turning into a caricature the character further. He even gives Jacob a degree of respect through depicting his true devotion to his partner; he’s a hypocrite, yet Ariana is a collaborator in his double standards, not a victim of it.

The other side of this balanced approach is that it may occasionally seem as if he is acknowledging elements of contemporary digital culture without deeply exploring them further. This is especially true regarding how he brings AI into the plot, an intriguing development which misses the psychosexual kick it deserves. The pluralized title for the film might give fans of the first movie expectations of a larger-scale ante-upping, and the film ultimately delivers exactly that, with an appropriately chaotic climax. However, initially, it’s more like a sleek Alfred Hitchcock movie than an wild-eyed, technology-obsessed De Palma-style shocker. Influencers’ extensive use of actual places may also be what keeps it from coming across like pure nightmare fuel. The world may be overrun with content-churning influencers, digital deception, and exploitative travel, but reality itself is still here, at least for now.