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“Everything about this smells like a cheap TV movie,” states an opportunistic commentator during the chilling follow-up Influencers. At that point, his tone is dismissive in a calculated way of a guest with an bizarre tale he once said he trusted. Yet his description of the events in the movie isn’t wrong. On its face, two films on demand about a young woman who insinuates herself into the worlds of social media stars before killing them seems like a modern-day version of a lurid but cable-ready weekly TV movie. The wild thing about Influencers is how much better it proves to be compared to much of its competition, regardless of where you watch it. It is precisely the thriller capable of giving other movies a serious bout of FOMO.

Recapping the First Film and Establishing the Scene

The 2022 film Influencer follows the mysterious CW (Cassandra Naud) while she quietly chooses solo-traveling social media targets, lures them to their deaths, and covers up those murders (at least temporarily) by seizing control of their socials. The film leaves off (spoiler ahead) with CW stranded on a deserted island off the coast of Thailand, after her latest target, Madison (Emily Tennant), turns the tables on her.

This lends 2025's Influencers a degree of ambiguity, as returning writer-director Kurtis David Harder picks up with CW contentedly residing alongside her partner Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. During a trip to celebrate their one-year anniversary, British influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) draws CW's attention and anger.

CW remarks to Diane that a person should try leaving a phone-addicted influencer somewhere with no technology and see if they can make it. Is this an origin-story prequel? Was CW radicalized by seeing the special treatment afforded one fame-seeker?

Shifting Perspectives and Global Pursuits

The story’s perspective changes multiple times, eventually clarifying those introductory moments' chronological position. Harder catches up with Madison, who has been exonerated for committing CW’s crimes, yet still encounters suspicion over her version of the events, including the murder of her boyfriend. The film also follows Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), based in Bali attempting to juice his career as part of a right-wing-influencer power couple with Ariana (Veronica Long), though his chosen platform is bro-heavy streams, rather than the Instagram photos that typically attract CW’s attention.

The actor continues to be terrifically magnetic in her role, a role that appears particularly custom-fit for her talents. (She also designed CW's striking wardrobe.) While the sequel’s focus tips heavily toward CW — the first film seemed more balanced between her and Madison — it still functions as a tale of rival amateur detectives, with both women both use fabricated profiles, Insta-stalking, and a seemingly unlimited travel budget to chase or evade one another. Then again, perhaps the unlimited budget isn’t necessary. Influencers have a knack for gaining access to posh places without paying much, an ability that CW echoes through her more blatant scheming.

Resourceful Production and Visual Wanderlust

The creative team for Influencers seem similarly resourceful in locating beautiful places to film, though they were likely less nefarious about it. Most of the film appears to be shot on location, providing it a real-world weight that remains even when numerous sequences consist of a handful of actors of characters staring at digital devices.

It follows the same logic which allowed the Bond franchise appear so persistently lavish over the years: Indeed, explosive action and special effects can display large spending, but just providing a travelogue of sorts to viewers also feels deeply filmic. This is especially fitting for a story so rooted in the coexisting surface-level allure and try-hard grind of creating envy-inducing online content.

Every character visiting Bali, similar to those who were in Thailand in the first film, appear to enjoy entry to unbelievably stylish contemporary villas; films exist about lifeguards that don’t show off this much overhead swimming-pool footage. The characters have to convincingly inhabit these lush, far-flung locations to emphasize the uneasy irony of how frequently each person — including the woman wreaking vengeance upon the online stars' self-centered phoniness — nonetheless spends plenty of time in the glow of their screens.

Nuanced Portrayals and Tech-Savvy Tension

At the same time, Harder hasn’t authored a rant against the vacuousness of online fame. While it can be gratifying to watch CW manipulate various online personalities, and a Hitchcockian sense of identification lets us to wish she evades capture, Harder is relatively understanding of the key influencer figures. In the first movie, he tapped into the loneliness Madison felt during ostensibly dream getaways. In this film, Harder seems to trust that merely watching Jacob at work will reveal that he’s peddling false masculinity to other gullible men; he avoids caricaturing the character further. He even gives Jacob a measure of dignity through depicting his true devotion to his girlfriend; he is two-faced, but Ariana is a partner in his hypocrisy, not someone exploited of it.

The flip side of this balanced approach is that it may occasionally seem as if he’s nodding at elements of contemporary digital culture without deeply exploring them further. This is particularly evident regarding how he introduces artificial intelligence into the story, a fascinating turn which misses the psychological edge it deserves. The pluralized title of Influencers might give devotees of the original expectations of a larger-scale escalation, and the movie does eventually provide that, with an appropriately wild final act. But before that, it’s more like a sleek Hitchcock thriller than an frenzied, tech-addled Brian De Palma thriller. Influencers’ extensive use of actual places may also be what keeps it from seeming like pure nightmare fuel. The world may be overrun with always-online creators, online fraud, and self-serving tourism, but reality itself is still here, for now.