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“This whole affair reeks like a cheap made-for-TV,” observes a cynical commentator during the chilling follow-up Influencers. At that point, he’s being dismissive in a calculated way of a guest whose outlandish story he previously claimed he believed. Yet his assessment of what’s happening on screen isn’t wrong. On its face, two films on demand about a woman who worms her way into the lives of online influencers and then murders them seems like the 21st-century equivalent of a lurid yet cable-ready Movie of the Week. The wild thing regarding Influencers remains just how superior it proves to be compared to much of the competition, irrespective of where you watch it. It’s the kind of suspense film capable of giving other movies a bad case of FOMO.

Revisiting the First Film and Establishing the Scene

The 2022 film Influencer follows the mysterious CW (Cassandra Naud) as she quietly chooses traveling alone social media targets, entices them to their doom, and covers up those murders (for a time) by taking control of their online accounts. The movie concludes (spoiler ahead) with CW stranded on an uninhabited island near the coast of Thailand, after her latest target, Madison (Emily Tennant), reverses their roles on her.

This lends 2025's Influencers a degree of mystery, when returning filmmaker Kurtis David Harder resumes with the character CW happily living alongside her partner Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. During a trip marking their first anniversary, UK-based influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) draws CW’s eye and anger.

CW comments to Diane that someone ought to attempt leaving a phone-addicted online personality in a place without any devices and see whether they can survive. Is this an origin-story prequel? Did CW become extremist by seeing the preferential treatment afforded a single fame-seeker?

Shifting Perspectives and Global Pursuits

The narrative viewpoint shifts several more times, eventually clarifying those introductory moments' place in the timeline. The story revisits Madison, now exonerated for committing CW's offenses, but still faces doubt regarding her recounting of the events, which includes the murder of Madison’s boyfriend. The film also follows Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), living in Bali attempting to juice his career as half of a right-wing-influencer duo alongside Ariana (Veronica Long), though his preferred medium is bro-heavy streams, rather than the curated images that normally capture CW’s attention.

The actor continues to be immensely captivating in the part, a role that appears particularly custom-fit for her talents. (She even created CW's eye-catching wardrobe.) Although the follow-up's screentime balance leans heavily into CW — the first film felt more equally divided between her and Madison — it still works as a tale of dueling investigators, as Madison and CW employ fabricated profiles, Insta-stalking, and an apparently unlimited travel budget to chase and/or escape one another. Of course, maybe the vast resources isn’t necessary. Online personalities possess a knack for getting to explore luxurious locales without paying much, a skill that CW echoes with her more overt scamming.

Ingenious Filmmaking and Cinematic Travelogue

The filmmakers behind Influencers appear equally ingenious about finding beautiful places to visit, although they were presumably less nefarious about it. The vast majority of the movie appears to be filmed in real places, giving it a real-world weight that remains even when many scenes involve a handful of actors of people staring at digital devices.

It’s the same principle which allowed the Bond franchise appear so consistently opulent over the years: Indeed, big action and visual effects can display a big budget, but simply offering a kind of visual tour to viewers also feels deeply filmic. It’s also particularly appropriate for a narrative so dependent on the coexisting surface-level allure and try-hard grind of creating envy-inducing digital content.

Every character visiting Bali, like those staying in Thailand in the first film, appear to enjoy access to unbelievably stylish modern bungalows; there are movies concerning beach rescuers which don't feature this much overhead swimming-pool footage. The characters must believably inhabit these lush, remote places to highlight the uneasy irony of how often each person — even the woman exacting revenge upon the online stars' narcissistic falseness — nonetheless spends plenty of time under the light of their devices.

Balanced Depictions and Tech-Savvy Tension

Simultaneously, the director has not crafted a screed targeting the vacuousness of the influencer industry. While it is satisfying to watch CW exploit various online personalities, and a Hitchcockian sense of alignment lets us to hope she evades capture, Harder is relatively understanding of the major influencer characters. In the first movie, he keyed into the isolation Madison felt during ostensibly dream getaways. In this film, Harder seems to trust that just observing Jacob in action will reveal that he’s peddling false masculinity to other gullible men; he avoids caricaturing the character. He even gives Jacob a measure of dignity by showing his genuine loyalty to his girlfriend; he is two-faced, but Ariana is a partner in his hypocrisy, not someone exploited by it.

The flip side of this balanced approach is that it can sometimes appear as if he is acknowledging bits 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 that lacks the psychological edge it should have. The pluralized title for the film could offer devotees of the original hope for an Aliens-style ante-upping, and the movie ultimately delivers exactly 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’ extensive use of real-world locations might also be what keeps it from coming across like pure nightmare fuel. The world may be overrun with always-online creators, digital deception, and self-serving tourism, but reality itself is still here, at least for now.