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“This whole affair smells like a cheap made-for-TV,” observes an opportunistic podcaster during the chilling follow-up Influencers. In the moment, his tone is dismissive in a calculated way of a guest with an outlandish story he previously claimed he believed. But his description of the events in the movie isn't inaccurate. Superficially, two streaming movies about a woman who worms her way into the lives of online influencers before killing them seems like the 21st-century equivalent of a lurid but network-approved weekly TV movie. The surprising aspect regarding Influencers is how much better it proves to be compared to much of its competition, irrespective of screen size. It is precisely the thriller capable of giving its peers a bad case of FOMO.

Recapping the Original and Setting the Stage

2022’s Influencer follows the mysterious CW (Cassandra Naud) while she methodically selects solo-traveling social media targets, entices them to their doom, and covers up those deaths (at least temporarily) by seizing control of their socials. The film leaves off (spoiler ahead) with CW marooned on a deserted island near the coast of Thailand, after her most recent mark, Madison (Emily Tennant), reverses their roles against her.

This lends 2025's Influencers some early mystery, as returning writer-director the director resumes with CW contentedly residing alongside her partner Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. During a trip to celebrate their one-year anniversary, UK-based influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) draws CW’s eye and anger.

CW comments to her partner that a person should try stranding a phone-addicted influencer somewhere without any devices and see if they can make it. Is this a backstory prequel? Was CW radicalized by seeing the preferential treatment afforded a single clout-chaser?

Shifting Perspectives and Global Pursuits

The narrative viewpoint shifts several more times, ultimately revealing those introductory moments' chronological position. The story revisits Madison, now exonerated for carrying out CW's offenses, yet still encounters suspicion over her version of the events, which includes the killing of Madison’s boyfriend. We also follow Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), living in Bali attempting to boost his profile as half of a conservative-influencer duo with Ariana (Veronica Long), though his chosen platform involves masculine-focused livestreams, rather than the curated images that normally attract CW's interest.

The actor continues to be terrifically magnetic in the part, which seems particularly custom-fit for her talents. (She also designed CW's striking outfits.) While the sequel’s screentime balance tips heavily toward CW — the original felt more equally divided between the two women — it still works as a tale of rival investigators, with both women employ fake accounts, Insta-stalking, and an apparently unlimited travel budget to chase and/or escape one another. Then again, perhaps the vast resources isn’t necessary. Influencers have a talent for gaining access to posh places without paying much, a skill which CW mirrors through her more blatant scamming.

Ingenious Filmmaking and Cinematic Travelogue

The filmmakers behind Influencers appear equally ingenious about finding beautiful places to visit, though they were presumably more legitimate about it. Most of the film appears to be shot on location, giving it an authentic gravity that lingers even as numerous sequences consist of a relatively small cast of people staring at computer or phone screens.

It’s the same principle that made the Bond franchise look so persistently lavish over the years: Yes, explosive action and visual effects can display large spending, but just providing a kind of visual tour to viewers also feels deeply filmic. It’s also particularly appropriate for a story so rooted in the simultaneous superficial glamour and desperate hustle involved in producing envy-inducing online content.

Every character in Bali, like those who were in Thailand in the first film, appear to enjoy entry to impossibly chic modern bungalows; films exist about lifeguards which don't feature this much overhead swimming-pool video. The characters have to convincingly inhabit these luxurious, far-flung locations to emphasize the uncomfortable paradox of how often each person — including the woman exacting revenge on the influencers’ self-centered phoniness — nonetheless spends plenty of time in the glow of their screens.

Nuanced Portrayals and Digital-Age Suspense

At the same time, the director has not crafted a rant targeting the vacuousness of the influencer industry. Though it can be satisfying to see CW manipulate different internet celebrities, and a Hitchcockian sense of alignment allows us to hope she evades capture, Harder is relatively understanding of the key influencer figures. Previously, he tapped into the isolation Madison experienced while on ostensibly envy-worthy vacations. Here, Harder seems to trust that just observing Jacob in action will reveal that he is selling false masculinity to other doofuses; he avoids turning into a caricature the character further. He even gives Jacob a degree of respect through depicting his true devotion to his partner; he is two-faced, yet Ariana is a partner in his double standards, not a victim by it.

The flip side of this balanced approach is that it can sometimes appear that he’s nodding at elements of contemporary digital culture without investigating them further. This is particularly evident of the way he introduces artificial intelligence into the plot, an intriguing development which misses the psychological edge it deserves. The pluralized title of Influencers might give devotees of the original expectations of an Aliens-style ante-upping, and the movie does eventually provide exactly that, with an appropriately chaotic climax. But before that, it’s more like a sleek Alfred Hitchcock movie than an frenzied, tech-addled Brian De Palma thriller. Influencers’ extensive use of real-world locations might also be what prevents it from seeming like utter horror. Our society might be saturated with always-online creators, online fraud, and exploitative travel, but the world itself is still here, for now.