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“The entire situation reeks of a cheap TV movie,” remarks an opportunistic commentator during the chilling follow-up Influencers. At that point, his tone is manipulatively dismissive toward an interviewee whose outlandish story he once claimed he believed. Yet his assessment of what’s happening on screen isn’t wrong. Superficially, a pair of streaming movies chronicling a woman who insinuates herself into the worlds of online influencers before killing them seems like the 21st-century equivalent of a lurid yet cable-ready weekly TV movie. The wild thing about Influencers remains how much better it is compared to much of the competition, irrespective of screen size. It’s the kind of thriller capable of giving other movies a bad case of FOMO.

Recapping the Original and Setting the Stage

The 2022 film Influencer follows the enigmatic CW (Cassandra Naud) while she methodically selects traveling alone influencer targets, entices them to their doom, and conceals those deaths (at least temporarily) by taking control of their online accounts. The movie leaves off (spoiler ahead) with CW stranded on an uninhabited island near the coast of Thailand, after her latest target, Madison (Emily Tennant), turns the tables against her.

This lends 2025's Influencers a degree of ambiguity, as returning writer-director the director resumes with CW happily living with her girlfriend Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. During a trip to celebrate their one-year anniversary, UK-based influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) draws CW's attention and anger.

CW comments to her partner that someone should try leaving a phone-addicted influencer somewhere with no technology and see if they can make it. Are we witnessing an origin-story prequel? Was CW radicalized after witnessing the preferential treatment given to a single clout-chaser?

Evolving Viewpoints and Global Pursuits

The narrative viewpoint shifts several more times, ultimately revealing those early scenes’ place in the timeline. The story revisits Madison, who has been cleared of carrying out CW's offenses, but still faces suspicion over her recounting of the events, including the killing of her boyfriend. We also follow Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), living in Bali and trying to juice his career as part of a right-wing-influencer duo with Ariana (Veronica Long), though his chosen platform is bro-heavy streams, as opposed to the Instagram photos that normally capture CW's interest.

The actor continues to be terrifically magnetic in her role, a role that appears especially tailor-made for her talents. (She also designed CW's eye-catching wardrobe.) Although the follow-up's screentime balance leans heavily into CW — the first film seemed more balanced between her and Madison — it still works as a story of rival investigators, as Madison and CW both use fake accounts, social media surveillance, and a seemingly unlimited travel budget to pursue or evade one another. Of course, maybe the vast resources aren't needed. Online personalities possess a knack for getting to explore posh places at little cost, a skill which CW mirrors with her more overt scheming.

Resourceful Production and Visual Wanderlust

The filmmakers behind Influencers appear equally ingenious in locating beautiful places to visit, though they were likely less nefarious in their methods. The vast majority of the movie appears to be filmed in real places, providing it an authentic gravity that remains even when numerous sequences involve a handful of actors of characters looking at computer or phone screens.

It’s the same principle which allowed the James Bond movies appear so persistently lavish over the years: Yes, explosive action and visual effects can show off a big budget, but simply offering a kind of visual tour for the audience also feels inherently cinematic. This is especially fitting for a narrative so dependent on the simultaneous surface-level allure and desperate hustle of creating envy-inducing online content.

Every character visiting Bali, similar to those staying in Thailand in the original, seem to have entry to unbelievably stylish contemporary villas; there are movies about lifeguards that don’t show off as much aerial pool video. These individuals have to convincingly occupy these luxurious, far-flung locations to emphasize the uneasy irony of how frequently everyone — even the woman wreaking vengeance upon the online stars' self-centered phoniness — nevertheless devotes much time under the light of their screens.

Balanced Depictions and Digital-Age Suspense

Simultaneously, Harder hasn’t authored a screed against the vacuousness of the influencer industry. Though it is satisfying to see CW exploit different internet celebrities, and a Hitchcockian sense of alignment allows us to wish she doesn’t get caught, the filmmaker is relatively understanding of the major influencer characters. In the first movie, he keyed into the isolation Madison felt during supposedly dream getaways. Here, Harder seems to trust that just observing Jacob at work will make it clear that he’s peddling snake-oil masculinity to other doofuses; he avoids caricaturing the character. He even grants Jacob a degree of respect through depicting his genuine loyalty to his partner; he’s a hypocrite, yet Ariana is a collaborator in his double standards, not a victim of it.

The other side of this balanced approach means it can sometimes appear that he is acknowledging bits of modern online life without deeply exploring them further. This is particularly evident of the way he brings AI into the story, a fascinating turn which misses the psychological edge it deserves. The retitled sequel of Influencers might give devotees of the original expectations of an Aliens-style ante-upping, and the film does eventually provide that, with a suitably wild final act. However, initially, it resembles more a polished Alfred Hitchcock movie than a frenzied, tech-addled Brian De Palma thriller. Influencers’ heavy use of real-world locations might also be what prevents it from coming across like pure nightmare fuel. The world might be saturated with content-churning influencers, online fraud, and self-serving tourism, but the world itself is still here, at least for now.