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“This whole affair smells of a cheap made-for-TV,” states a cynical commentator during the chilling follow-up Influencers. In the moment, his tone is dismissive in a calculated way of a guest whose bizarre tale he previously claimed he believed. But his assessment of the events in the movie isn’t wrong. Superficially, two streaming movies about a woman who insinuates herself into the lives of social media stars before killing them feels like the 21st-century equivalent of a lurid but network-approved Movie of the Week. The wild thing regarding Influencers remains just how superior it is compared to much of the competition, regardless of where you watch it. It is precisely the thriller that should give other movies a bad case of FOMO.

Revisiting the First Film and Establishing the Scene

2022’s Influencer follows the enigmatic CW (Cassandra Naud) as she quietly chooses traveling alone social media targets, lures them to their doom, and covers up those deaths (for a time) by taking control of their socials. The film concludes (spoiler ahead) with CW marooned on an uninhabited island off the coast of Thailand, after her most recent mark, Madison (Emily Tennant), reverses their roles against her.

This lends 2025's Influencers a degree of ambiguity, as returning filmmaker Kurtis David Harder resumes with 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 eye and ire.

CW comments to her partner that someone should try stranding a phone-addicted influencer in a place with no technology and see whether they can survive. Are we witnessing an origin-story prequel? Was CW radicalized by seeing the preferential treatment afforded a single fame-seeker?

Evolving Viewpoints and International Chases

The narrative viewpoint shifts several more times, ultimately revealing those early scenes’ chronological position. The story revisits Madison, now cleared of carrying out CW’s crimes, but still faces suspicion over her recounting of what happened, which includes the murder of her boyfriend. We also follow Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), based in Bali attempting to juice his career as part of a conservative-influencer duo with Ariana (Veronica Long), although his chosen platform involves masculine-focused livestreams, as opposed to the curated images that typically capture CW’s attention.

The actor continues to be immensely captivating in her role, a role that appears particularly tailor-made to her strengths. (She even created CW's eye-catching wardrobe.) While the follow-up's screentime balance leans heavily into CW — the first film seemed more balanced between the two women — it still functions as a tale of dueling investigators, as Madison and CW employ fake accounts, Insta-stalking, and a seemingly unlimited travel budget to chase or evade one another. Then again, maybe the unlimited budget aren't needed. Online personalities possess a knack for getting to explore posh places without paying much, an ability that CW echoes through her more blatant scheming.

Resourceful Production and Visual Wanderlust

The filmmakers behind Influencers appear equally resourceful about finding beautiful places to film, though they were likely less nefarious about it. The vast majority of the movie seems to be filmed in real places, giving it a real-world weight that lingers even when many scenes involve a handful of actors of characters staring at computer or phone screens.

It’s the same principle which allowed the Bond franchise look so consistently opulent for decades: Indeed, explosive action and special effects can display a big budget, but simply offering a kind of visual tour for the audience also feels deeply filmic. This is particularly appropriate for a narrative so rooted in the simultaneous surface-level allure and desperate hustle involved in producing envy-inducing online content.

Every character in Bali, similar to those staying in Thailand in the first film, appear to enjoy access to unbelievably stylish contemporary villas; films exist concerning beach rescuers which don't feature this much overhead swimming-pool footage. The characters have to convincingly occupy these luxurious, far-flung locations to highlight the uneasy irony of how frequently each person — even the woman wreaking vengeance upon the online stars' narcissistic falseness — nevertheless devotes much time under the light of their screens.

Nuanced Portrayals and Digital-Age Suspense

At the same time, the director has not crafted a rant targeting the emptiness of online fame. While it is satisfying to watch CW exploit different internet celebrities, and a Hitchcockian sense of alignment allows us to hope she evades capture, Harder is somewhat sympathetic to the major influencer characters. Previously, he keyed into the isolation Madison experienced while on supposedly envy-worthy vacations. Here, Harder seems to trust that just observing Jacob at work will reveal that he’s peddling snake-oil masculinity to other doofuses; he avoids caricaturing the character further. He even gives Jacob a degree of respect through depicting his true devotion to his girlfriend; he’s a hypocrite, but Ariana is a collaborator in his hypocrisy, not a victim of it.

The other side of Harder’s even-keeled presentation is that it can sometimes appear that he is acknowledging elements of modern online life without deeply exploring them further. This is particularly evident regarding how he introduces artificial intelligence into the story, an intriguing development that lacks the psychosexual kick it should have. The pluralized title of Influencers might give fans of the first movie expectations of a larger-scale escalation, and the movie does eventually provide exactly that, with a suitably wild final act. However, initially, it resembles more a polished Alfred Hitchcock movie than an frenzied, technology-obsessed De Palma-style shocker. Influencers’ heavy use of real-world locations might also be what keeps it from seeming like utter horror. Our society might be saturated with content-churning influencers, online fraud, and self-serving tourism, but the world itself remains present, at least for now.