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“Everything about this reeks like a cheap TV movie,” remarks an opportunistic commentator during the chilling follow-up Influencers. In the moment, his tone is manipulatively dismissive toward an interviewee with an outlandish story he previously claimed he believed. But his assessment of the events in the movie isn't inaccurate. On its face, two films on demand about a woman who worms her way into the worlds of social media stars and then murders them seems like the 21st-century equivalent of a tawdry but network-approved Movie of the Week. The surprising aspect about Influencers is how much better it proves to be than plenty of the competition, irrespective of screen size. It’s the kind of thriller that should give other movies a serious bout of FOMO.

Revisiting the First Film and Establishing the Scene

The 2022 film Influencer tracks the mysterious CW (Cassandra Naud) as she quietly chooses solo-traveling influencer targets, lures them to their doom, and conceals those deaths (at least temporarily) by seizing control of their socials. The movie leaves off (spoiler ahead) with CW stranded on an uninhabited island off the coast of Thailand, following her latest target, Madison (Emily Tennant), reverses their roles on her.

This lends 2025's Influencers some early mystery, as returning filmmaker the director picks up with CW contentedly residing with her girlfriend Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. During a trip to celebrate their first anniversary, UK-based influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) catches CW's attention and anger.

CW comments to Diane that someone should try leaving a phone-addicted influencer in a place with no technology and see whether they can survive. Are we witnessing a backstory prequel? Did CW become extremist by seeing the preferential treatment given to a single clout-chaser?

Shifting Perspectives and Global Pursuits

The narrative viewpoint shifts several more times, eventually clarifying those early scenes’ place in the timeline. The story revisits Madison, now exonerated for committing CW's offenses, but still faces suspicion over her version of what happened, which includes the murder of her boyfriend. The film also follows Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), living in Bali attempting to boost his profile as half of a conservative-influencer power couple alongside Ariana (Veronica Long), though his chosen platform is bro-heavy streams, rather than the curated images that normally capture CW's interest.

Naud remains terrifically magnetic in the part, a role that appears particularly tailor-made to her strengths. (She also designed CW's eye-catching wardrobe.) While the follow-up's focus leans heavily into CW — the original seemed more balanced between the two women — it still functions as a story of dueling investigators, with both women employ fake accounts, Insta-stalking, and an apparently limitless travel fund to chase and/or escape one another. Of course, perhaps the unlimited budget isn’t necessary. Online personalities possess a talent for getting to explore posh places at little cost, a skill that CW echoes through her more blatant scheming.

Resourceful Production and Cinematic Travelogue

The filmmakers behind Influencers seem similarly resourceful in locating stunning locations to visit, although they were likely more legitimate about it. The vast majority of the movie seems to be filmed in real places, giving it a real-world weight that lingers even when numerous sequences consist of a relatively small cast of characters looking at computer or phone screens.

It follows the same logic that made the James Bond movies appear so persistently lavish over the years: Indeed, big action and special effects can display a big budget, however just providing a kind of visual tour to viewers also seems deeply filmic. It’s also especially fitting for a narrative so dependent on the simultaneous superficial glamour and desperate hustle of creating jealousy-worthy online content.

Every character in Bali, like those staying in Thailand in the original, seem to have access to impossibly chic modern bungalows; films exist about lifeguards which don't feature this much aerial pool video. The characters have to convincingly inhabit these luxurious, far-flung locations to highlight the uncomfortable paradox of how frequently each person — including the woman wreaking vengeance upon the online stars' narcissistic falseness — nonetheless spends plenty of time in the glow of their devices.

Balanced Depictions and Tech-Savvy Tension

At the same time, the director has not crafted a screed targeting the emptiness of the influencer industry. While it is gratifying to see CW exploit different internet celebrities, and a Hitchcockian sense of alignment allows us to wish she evades capture, the filmmaker is somewhat sympathetic to the major influencer characters. In the first movie, he tapped into the isolation Madison felt while on ostensibly dream getaways. Here, the director appears confident that just observing Jacob in action will make it clear that he is selling snake-oil masculinity to other gullible men; he avoids caricaturing the character further. He even grants Jacob a degree of respect through depicting his genuine loyalty to his girlfriend; he is two-faced, yet Ariana is a collaborator in his double standards, not a victim of it.

The flip side of Harder’s even-keeled presentation means it can sometimes appear that he’s nodding at bits of modern online life 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 pluralized title of Influencers could offer devotees of the original hope for a larger-scale ante-upping, and the film ultimately delivers exactly that, with a suitably wild final act. But before that, it resembles more a polished Hitchcock thriller than an wild-eyed, technology-obsessed De Palma-style shocker. Influencers’ extensive use of actual places may also be what prevents it from coming across like utter horror. The world may be overrun with content-churning influencers, digital deception, and exploitative travel, but the world itself is still here, for now.