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“This whole affair reeks like a cheap TV movie,” observes a cynical commentator during the chilling follow-up Influencers. In the moment, his tone is dismissive in a calculated way toward an interviewee with an bizarre tale he once claimed he believed. But his assessment of the events in the movie isn't inaccurate. On its face, two films on demand about a woman who insinuates herself into the worlds of online influencers before killing them feels like a modern-day version of a lurid but network-approved weekly TV movie. The surprising aspect about Influencers remains just how superior it proves to be compared to much of the competition, regardless of where you watch it. It is precisely the suspense film capable of giving other movies a bad case of FOMO.

Revisiting the First Film and Setting the Stage

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

This lends the 2025 Influencers some early mystery, when returning writer-director Kurtis David Harder resumes with the character CW happily living with her girlfriend Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. On a journey to celebrate the couple’s one-year anniversary, UK-based influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) catches CW's attention and anger.

CW remarks to Diane that a person should try leaving a device-obsessed influencer somewhere without any devices and see whether they can make it. Is this an origin-story prequel? Did CW become extremist after witnessing the preferential treatment given to a single clout-chaser?

Evolving Viewpoints and International Chases

The narrative viewpoint shifts several more times, eventually clarifying those early scenes’ chronological position. The story revisits Madison, who has been exonerated for committing CW's offenses, but still faces doubt regarding her version of what happened, which includes the murder of her boyfriend. The film also follows Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), living in Bali and trying to boost his profile as part of a right-wing-influencer power couple alongside Ariana (Veronica Long), though his chosen platform is bro-heavy streams, rather than the curated images that typically attract CW's interest.

Naud remains terrifically magnetic in the part, which seems especially custom-fit for her talents. (She also designed CW's striking wardrobe.) Although the sequel’s focus leans heavily into CW — the original seemed more balanced between the two women — it still works as a story of dueling amateur detectives, with both women employ fabricated profiles, Insta-stalking, and a seemingly unlimited travel budget to chase and/or escape each other. Of course, perhaps the vast resources isn’t necessary. Influencers have a talent for getting to explore luxurious locales at little cost, a skill that CW echoes with her more overt scamming.

Resourceful Production and Cinematic Travelogue

The filmmakers behind Influencers seem similarly ingenious in locating stunning locations to film, though they were likely less nefarious in their methods. Most of the movie appears to be shot on location, providing it a real-world weight that lingers even when many scenes involve a relatively small cast of characters looking at computer or phone screens.

It follows the same logic that made the Bond franchise appear so persistently lavish over the years: Yes, explosive action and visual effects can show off large spending, but just providing a kind of visual tour to viewers also seems deeply filmic. This is particularly appropriate for a narrative so rooted in the coexisting surface-level allure and desperate hustle involved in producing envy-inducing digital content.

Every character in Bali, similar to those staying in Thailand in the original, seem to have access to impossibly chic contemporary villas; films exist concerning beach rescuers which don't feature this much overhead swimming-pool footage. These individuals must believably inhabit these luxurious, remote places to highlight the uneasy irony of how often each person — including the woman exacting revenge upon the online stars' narcissistic falseness — nonetheless devotes much time in the glow of their devices.

Balanced Depictions and Tech-Savvy Tension

At the same time, the director has not crafted a screed against the emptiness of the influencer industry. Though it can be gratifying to watch CW manipulate various online personalities, and a Hitchcockian sense of identification allows us to wish she evades capture, the filmmaker is somewhat understanding of the key influencer figures. Previously, he tapped into the loneliness Madison experienced while on ostensibly dream getaways. In this film, Harder seems to trust that just observing Jacob at work will make it clear that he’s peddling snake-oil masculinity to other gullible men; he avoids caricaturing the character. He even gives Jacob a degree of respect by showing his true devotion to his girlfriend; he’s a hypocrite, but Ariana is a collaborator in his hypocrisy, not someone exploited of it.

The other side of Harder’s even-keeled presentation is that it may occasionally seem that he’s nodding at elements of modern online life without deeply exploring them further. This is especially true regarding how he introduces artificial intelligence into the story, an intriguing development which misses the psychological edge it should have. The pluralized title for the film could offer fans of the first movie hope for a larger-scale ante-upping, and the film does eventually provide that, with a suitably wild final act. However, initially, it’s more like a sleek Alfred Hitchcock movie than a frenzied, technology-obsessed Brian De Palma thriller. Influencers’ heavy use of real-world locations might also be what prevents it from coming across like utter horror. Our society may be overrun with always-online creators, digital deception, and self-serving tourism, but reality itself remains present, at least for now.