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“The entire situation smells of a bad TV movie,” observes an opportunistic commentator midway through the chilling follow-up Influencers. In the moment, his tone is dismissive in a calculated way toward an interviewee whose outlandish story he once said he trusted. But his description of the events on screen isn’t wrong. On its face, a pair of films on demand chronicling a young woman who insinuates herself into the lives of online influencers and then murders them seems like the 21st-century equivalent of a lurid but network-approved Movie of the Week. The wild thing about Influencers remains how much better it proves to be than plenty of its competition, irrespective of where you watch it. It is precisely the suspense film 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) as she methodically selects traveling alone social media targets, entices them to their deaths, and conceals those deaths (at least temporarily) by taking control of their socials. The film concludes (spoiler ahead) with CW stranded on a deserted island near the coast of Thailand, after her latest target, Madison (Emily Tennant), reverses their roles against her.

This lends the 2025 Influencers a degree of ambiguity, as returning writer-director the director picks up with CW happily living alongside her partner Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. On a journey marking their first anniversary, UK-based influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) catches CW’s eye and ire.

CW remarks to her partner that someone should try stranding a phone-addicted online personality in a place without any devices and see whether they can make it. Are we witnessing a backstory prequel? Did CW become extremist after witnessing the preferential treatment afforded one fame-seeker?

Evolving Viewpoints and International Chases

The story’s perspective shifts several more times, ultimately revealing those introductory moments' place in the timeline. The story revisits Madison, who has been cleared of committing CW’s crimes, but still faces suspicion regarding her version of what happened, including the murder of Madison’s boyfriend. We also follow Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), based in Bali attempting to juice his career as half of a conservative-influencer power couple with Ariana (Veronica Long), though his chosen platform involves masculine-focused livestreams, rather than the Instagram photos that normally capture CW’s attention.

The actor continues to be terrifically magnetic in her role, a role that appears especially tailor-made to her strengths. (She even created CW's striking outfits.) While the follow-up's screentime balance leans heavily into CW — the original seemed more balanced between the two women — it still works as a tale of dueling investigators, with both women employ fake accounts, social media surveillance, and a seemingly limitless travel fund to chase and/or escape each other. Then again, maybe the unlimited budget aren't needed. Influencers have a knack for getting to explore luxurious locales at little cost, an ability which CW mirrors with her more overt scamming.

Ingenious Filmmaking and Cinematic Travelogue

The creative team for Influencers appear equally resourceful in locating stunning locations to visit, though they were likely more legitimate in their methods. Most of the film seems to be shot on location, providing it an authentic gravity that lingers even as numerous sequences involve a relatively small cast of people staring at computer or phone screens.

It follows the same logic which allowed the James Bond movies look so persistently lavish over the years: Indeed, big action and special effects can display large spending, however just providing a travelogue of sorts to viewers also feels deeply filmic. It’s also particularly appropriate for a story so rooted in the coexisting superficial glamour and try-hard grind of creating envy-inducing digital content.

Every character visiting Bali, similar to those staying in Thailand in the original, seem to have access to impossibly chic contemporary villas; films exist concerning beach rescuers that don’t show off as much overhead swimming-pool footage. The characters have to convincingly occupy these luxurious, remote places to highlight the uneasy irony of how often each person — even the woman exacting revenge upon the online stars' self-centered phoniness — nonetheless devotes much time in the glow of their screens.

Balanced Depictions and Tech-Savvy Tension

Simultaneously, Harder hasn’t authored a screed against the vacuousness of online fame. Though it can be gratifying to watch CW manipulate different internet celebrities, and a sense reminiscent of Hitchcock of identification lets us to wish she evades capture, the filmmaker is somewhat sympathetic to the major influencer characters. Previously, he tapped into the loneliness Madison experienced while on supposedly dream getaways. Here, Harder seems to trust that just observing Jacob in action will make it clear that he’s peddling snake-oil masculinity to other doofuses; he avoids caricaturing the character further. He even grants Jacob a measure of dignity through depicting his genuine loyalty to his partner; he is two-faced, but Ariana is a collaborator in his double standards, not someone exploited of it.

The other side of Harder’s even-keeled presentation means it can sometimes appear that he’s nodding at elements of contemporary digital culture without investigating them. This is particularly evident of the way he introduces artificial intelligence into the story, an intriguing development which misses the psychosexual kick it should have. The retitled sequel of Influencers could offer fans of the first movie hope for an Aliens-style ante-upping, and the film does eventually provide that, with an appropriately chaotic climax. But before that, it resembles more a sleek Hitchcock thriller than a wild-eyed, technology-obsessed De Palma-style shocker. Influencers’ heavy use of actual places may also be what keeps it from seeming like utter horror. The world may be overrun with content-churning influencers, digital deception, and exploitative travel, but the world itself remains present, for now.