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“The entire situation smells like a cheap TV movie,” states an opportunistic podcaster during the chilling follow-up Influencers. In the moment, he’s being manipulatively dismissive of a guest with an bizarre tale he once said he trusted. Yet his assessment of the events on screen isn’t wrong. On its face, two films on demand chronicling a woman who insinuates herself into the worlds of online influencers before killing them feels like a modern-day version of a tawdry yet network-approved Movie of the Week. The wild thing about Influencers remains how much better it proves to be 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 Original and Establishing the Scene

The 2022 film Influencer tracks the enigmatic CW (Cassandra Naud) as she quietly chooses traveling alone social media targets, lures them to their doom, and conceals those deaths (at least temporarily) by seizing control of their online accounts. The film leaves off (spoiler ahead) with CW marooned on an uninhabited island off the coast of Thailand, after her most recent mark, Madison (Emily Tennant), turns the tables against her.

This lends the 2025 Influencers some early ambiguity, as returning filmmaker the director resumes with CW happily living alongside her partner Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. During a trip to celebrate the couple’s first anniversary, British influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) draws CW's attention and ire.

CW comments to Diane that a person ought to attempt leaving a device-obsessed online personality in a place without any devices to see whether they can make it. Is this an origin-story prequel? Did CW become extremist by seeing the preferential treatment afforded one clout-chaser?

Shifting Perspectives and Global Pursuits

The narrative viewpoint shifts several more times, eventually clarifying those early scenes’ chronological position. Harder catches up with Madison, who has been exonerated for committing CW’s crimes, but still faces doubt over her recounting of the events, which includes the murder of Madison’s boyfriend. The film also follows Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), based in Bali attempting to juice his career as part of a conservative-influencer duo alongside Ariana (Veronica Long), though his chosen platform involves masculine-focused livestreams, rather than the curated images that normally capture CW’s attention.

Naud remains terrifically magnetic in her role, a role that appears especially custom-fit for her talents. (She even created CW's eye-catching wardrobe.) While the sequel’s focus leans heavily into CW — the first film seemed more balanced between the two women — it still functions as a story of dueling investigators, as Madison and CW employ fake accounts, Insta-stalking, and an apparently limitless travel fund to pursue or evade one another. Then again, maybe the unlimited budget aren't needed. Online personalities possess a talent for getting to explore posh places at little cost, a skill which CW mirrors with her more overt scheming.

Ingenious Filmmaking and Visual Wanderlust

The filmmakers behind Influencers appear equally resourceful in locating beautiful places to film, though they were presumably more legitimate about it. Most of the film seems to be filmed in real places, providing it an authentic gravity that remains even when many scenes involve a handful of actors of characters looking at digital devices.

It’s the same principle that made the Bond franchise look so persistently lavish for decades: Indeed, explosive action and visual effects can display a big budget, but simply offering a travelogue of sorts for the audience also seems inherently cinematic. This is especially fitting for a story so rooted in the coexisting superficial glamour and try-hard grind involved in producing envy-inducing digital content.

Every character visiting Bali, like those who were in Thailand in the first film, seem to have entry to impossibly chic contemporary villas; there are movies concerning beach rescuers that don’t show off this much aerial pool footage. The characters have to convincingly occupy these lush, remote places to emphasize the uncomfortable paradox of how often each person — even the woman wreaking vengeance upon the online stars' narcissistic falseness — nevertheless spends plenty of time under the light of their screens.

Balanced Depictions and Digital-Age Suspense

Simultaneously, the director has not crafted a rant targeting the vacuousness of online fame. Though it is satisfying to see CW exploit various online personalities, and a sense reminiscent of Hitchcock of identification allows us to hope she evades capture, Harder is somewhat sympathetic to the major influencer characters. Previously, he tapped into the loneliness Madison felt during ostensibly envy-worthy vacations. In this film, the director appears confident that just observing Jacob at work will reveal that he’s peddling snake-oil masculinity to other doofuses; he resists caricaturing the character. He even grants Jacob a degree of respect by showing his genuine loyalty to his girlfriend; he’s a hypocrite, but Ariana is a collaborator in his hypocrisy, not a victim of it.

The flip side of Harder’s even-keeled presentation means it may occasionally seem that he is acknowledging bits of contemporary digital culture without investigating them. This is especially true regarding how he introduces artificial intelligence into the plot, a fascinating turn which misses the psychosexual kick it should have. The retitled sequel of Influencers could offer devotees of the original expectations of an Aliens-style ante-upping, and the movie ultimately delivers exactly that, with an appropriately chaotic climax. But before that, it’s more like a sleek Alfred Hitchcock movie than a frenzied, technology-obsessed Brian De Palma thriller. Influencers’ heavy use of actual places may also be what prevents it from coming across like utter horror. The world may be overrun with always-online creators, digital deception, and exploitative travel, but reality itself remains present, at least for now.