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“The entire situation smells of a cheap TV movie,” observes a cynical podcaster during the chilling follow-up Influencers. At that point, his tone is manipulatively dismissive of a guest with an bizarre tale he once claimed he believed. Yet his assessment of what’s happening on screen isn't inaccurate. Superficially, two streaming movies chronicling a young woman who insinuates herself into the worlds of online influencers before killing them seems like the 21st-century equivalent of a lurid yet cable-ready weekly TV movie. The wild thing about Influencers is just how superior it is than plenty of the competition, irrespective of screen size. It’s the kind of suspense film capable of giving its peers a bad case of FOMO.

Recapping the First Film and Setting the Stage

2022’s Influencer tracks the enigmatic CW (Cassandra Naud) while she methodically selects solo-traveling influencer targets, lures them to their doom, and conceals those murders (for a time) by seizing control of their socials. The film concludes (spoiler ahead) with CW stranded on an uninhabited island off the coast of Thailand, following her latest target, Madison (Emily Tennant), turns the tables on her.

This provides 2025's Influencers some early ambiguity, when returning filmmaker the director picks up with the character CW contentedly residing alongside her partner Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. During a trip to celebrate the couple’s one-year anniversary, British influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) catches CW's attention and anger.

CW remarks to her partner that someone ought to attempt leaving a phone-addicted online personality somewhere without any devices to see if they can make it. Are we witnessing a backstory prequel? Did CW become extremist 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’ place in the timeline. The story revisits Madison, now cleared of carrying out CW's offenses, but still faces doubt over her recounting of the events, which includes the killing of Madison’s boyfriend. We also follow Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), living in Bali and trying to boost his profile as half of a conservative-influencer power couple with Ariana (Veronica Long), though his chosen platform is bro-heavy streams, rather than the curated images that normally attract CW’s attention.

Naud remains terrifically magnetic in the part, which seems especially custom-fit to her strengths. (She also designed CW's striking wardrobe.) While the follow-up's screentime balance tips heavily toward CW — the original felt more equally divided between her and Madison — it still works as a tale of rival amateur detectives, with both women both use fake accounts, Insta-stalking, and a seemingly limitless travel fund to pursue or evade each other. Of course, perhaps the unlimited budget isn’t necessary. Influencers have a knack for getting to explore luxurious locales without paying much, an ability which CW mirrors through her more blatant scamming.

Resourceful Production and Cinematic Travelogue

The creative team for Influencers seem similarly resourceful about finding stunning locations to film, though they were presumably less nefarious in their methods. The vast majority of the movie seems to be filmed in real places, providing it an authentic gravity that remains even when many scenes involve a relatively small cast of people staring at digital devices.

It follows the same logic that made the James Bond movies appear so persistently lavish for decades: Yes, explosive action and special effects can display a big budget, however just providing a kind of visual tour to viewers also feels inherently cinematic. It’s also especially fitting for a story so rooted in the simultaneous surface-level allure and desperate hustle of creating envy-inducing digital content.

Every character in Bali, similar to those who were in Thailand in the first film, appear to enjoy entry to impossibly chic modern bungalows; films exist concerning beach rescuers that don’t show off this much overhead swimming-pool footage. These individuals have to convincingly occupy these luxurious, remote places to emphasize the uneasy irony of how frequently each person — including the woman exacting revenge upon the online stars' self-centered phoniness — nevertheless devotes much time under the light of their devices.

Nuanced Portrayals and Digital-Age Suspense

At the same time, Harder hasn’t authored a rant against the vacuousness of the influencer industry. While it is satisfying to watch CW manipulate various online personalities, and a sense reminiscent of Hitchcock of alignment lets us to wish she doesn’t get caught, the filmmaker is relatively sympathetic to the major influencer characters. Previously, he tapped into the loneliness Madison felt during supposedly dream getaways. In this film, the director appears confident that just observing Jacob in action will reveal that he is selling snake-oil masculinity to other gullible men; he avoids caricaturing 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 hypocrisy, not someone exploited of it.

The flip side of this balanced approach means it can sometimes appear that he is acknowledging bits of contemporary digital culture without deeply exploring them further. This is particularly evident of the way he brings AI into the plot, a fascinating turn which misses the psychological edge it should have. The pluralized title of Influencers might give fans of the first movie hope for an Aliens-style escalation, and the film ultimately delivers that, with a suitably chaotic climax. However, initially, it resembles more a sleek Hitchcock thriller than an frenzied, technology-obsessed Brian De Palma thriller. Influencers’ extensive use of actual places may also be what prevents it from seeming like pure nightmare fuel. Our society may be overrun with always-online creators, online fraud, and exploitative travel, but reality itself remains present, at least for now.