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“The entire situation reeks like a bad made-for-TV,” states a cynical commentator midway through the chilling follow-up Influencers. At that point, he’s being manipulatively dismissive of a guest whose bizarre tale he previously said he trusted. Yet his assessment of what’s happening on screen isn’t wrong. Superficially, a pair of films on demand about a young woman who insinuates herself into the lives of social media stars before killing them seems like a modern-day version of a lurid yet cable-ready weekly TV movie. The surprising aspect regarding Influencers is just how superior it proves to be compared to much of the competition, irrespective of where you watch it. It is precisely the suspense film that should give its peers a serious bout of FOMO.

Recapping the Original and Establishing the Scene

2022’s Influencer tracks the mysterious CW (Cassandra Naud) while she methodically selects solo-traveling influencer targets, entices them to their deaths, and covers up those murders (for a time) by taking control of their socials. The movie leaves off (spoiler ahead) with CW stranded on a deserted island off the coast of Thailand, following her latest target, Madison (Emily Tennant), turns the tables against her.

This provides 2025's Influencers a degree of mystery, as returning filmmaker the director resumes with CW happily living with her girlfriend Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. On a journey marking the couple’s first anniversary, British influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) draws CW's attention and ire.

CW comments to her partner that a person should try stranding a phone-addicted online personality in a place without any devices to see if they can survive. Is this a backstory prequel? Did CW become extremist by seeing the preferential treatment given to one clout-chaser?

Shifting Perspectives and International Chases

The narrative viewpoint shifts several more times, ultimately revealing those introductory moments' place in the timeline. Harder catches up with Madison, who has been cleared of committing CW's offenses, yet still encounters suspicion over her version of what happened, including the murder of Madison’s boyfriend. The film also follows Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), living in Bali and trying to juice his career as part of a conservative-influencer power couple with Ariana (Veronica Long), although his preferred medium is bro-heavy streams, rather than the Instagram photos that normally capture CW's interest.

Naud remains terrifically magnetic in her role, which seems especially tailor-made for her talents. (She even created CW's striking wardrobe.) Although the follow-up's focus leans heavily into CW — the first film felt more equally divided between her and Madison — it still works as a story of dueling investigators, with both women employ fabricated profiles, Insta-stalking, and a seemingly unlimited travel budget to pursue or evade each other. Of course, maybe the unlimited budget aren't needed. Online personalities possess a talent for getting to explore luxurious locales at little cost, a skill that CW echoes through her more blatant scheming.

Ingenious Filmmaking and Visual Wanderlust

The creative team for Influencers seem similarly ingenious about finding stunning locations to visit, though they were presumably less nefarious about it. The vast majority of the film appears to be shot on location, giving it a real-world weight that remains even as many scenes involve a relatively small cast of people staring at computer or phone screens.

It’s the same principle that made the Bond franchise appear so consistently opulent for decades: Indeed, explosive action and visual effects can display large spending, but just providing a travelogue of sorts to viewers also seems deeply filmic. It’s also particularly appropriate for a story so dependent on the coexisting superficial glamour and desperate hustle of creating envy-inducing digital content.

All of the characters visiting Bali, like those staying in Thailand in the original, seem to have entry to unbelievably stylish modern bungalows; there are movies about lifeguards that don’t show off this much overhead swimming-pool video. These individuals have to convincingly occupy these lush, remote places to highlight the uneasy irony of how often everyone — including the woman wreaking vengeance on the influencers’ self-centered phoniness — nevertheless devotes much time in the glow of their screens.

Nuanced Portrayals and Tech-Savvy Tension

Simultaneously, the director has not crafted a rant against the emptiness of the influencer industry. Though it is gratifying to see CW manipulate different internet celebrities, and a Hitchcockian sense of alignment lets us to wish she doesn’t get caught, the filmmaker is somewhat sympathetic to the key influencer figures. Previously, he tapped into the isolation Madison felt during supposedly dream getaways. Here, Harder seems to trust that merely watching Jacob in action will make it clear that he is selling snake-oil masculinity to other doofuses; he resists turning into a caricature the character further. He even grants Jacob a measure of dignity through depicting his genuine loyalty 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 may occasionally seem that he’s nodding at elements of contemporary digital culture without investigating them further. This is particularly evident of the way he introduces artificial intelligence into the story, a fascinating turn that lacks the psychosexual kick it deserves. The retitled sequel of Influencers could offer fans of the first movie 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 sleek Alfred Hitchcock movie than a wild-eyed, tech-addled De Palma-style shocker. Influencers’ heavy use of actual places might also be what prevents it from coming across like pure nightmare fuel. Our society might be saturated with always-online creators, digital deception, and self-serving tourism, but reality itself remains present, for now.