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“This whole affair smells like a bad made-for-TV,” observes a cynical podcaster during the chilling follow-up Influencers. At that point, he’s being dismissive in a calculated way toward an interviewee with an bizarre tale he once said he trusted. Yet his assessment of the events in the movie isn't inaccurate. On its face, a pair of streaming movies about a woman who worms her way into the worlds of social media stars before killing them feels like the 21st-century equivalent of a lurid yet network-approved Movie of the Week. The wild thing regarding Influencers is how much better it proves to be compared to much of its competition, regardless of where you watch it. It is precisely the thriller that should give its peers a bad case of FOMO.

Recapping the First Film and Establishing the Scene

2022’s Influencer follows the enigmatic CW (Cassandra Naud) as she quietly chooses traveling alone social media targets, lures them to their doom, and covers up those deaths (at least temporarily) by seizing control of their online accounts. The film concludes (spoiler ahead) with CW stranded on an uninhabited island near the coast of Thailand, following her latest target, Madison (Emily Tennant), reverses their roles against her.

This lends the 2025 Influencers a degree of ambiguity, as returning writer-director Kurtis David Harder resumes with the character CW contentedly residing with her girlfriend Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. On a journey to celebrate their one-year anniversary, UK-based influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) draws CW’s eye and anger.

CW remarks to her partner that someone ought to attempt stranding a phone-addicted online personality somewhere without any devices and see if they can survive. Is this an origin-story prequel? Did CW become extremist by seeing the special treatment given to one fame-seeker?

Shifting Perspectives and Global Pursuits

The story’s perspective shifts several more times, ultimately revealing those introductory moments' chronological position. The story revisits Madison, who has been cleared of committing CW’s crimes, but still faces suspicion over her recounting of what happened, which includes the killing of her boyfriend. We also follow Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), based in Bali attempting to juice his career as part of a right-wing-influencer power couple with Ariana (Veronica Long), though his preferred medium involves masculine-focused livestreams, as opposed to the Instagram photos that typically capture CW's interest.

Naud remains terrifically magnetic in her role, which seems particularly custom-fit for her talents. (She even created CW's eye-catching wardrobe.) While the follow-up's screentime balance leans heavily into CW — the original felt more equally divided between the two women — it still functions as a story of dueling investigators, with both women both use fake accounts, Insta-stalking, and an apparently limitless travel fund to pursue and/or escape one another. Then again, perhaps the vast resources aren't needed. Online personalities possess a talent for getting to explore posh places without paying much, an ability which CW mirrors with her more overt scheming.

Ingenious Filmmaking and Visual Wanderlust

The creative team for Influencers seem similarly resourceful in locating beautiful places to film, though they were likely less nefarious in their methods. Most of the film appears to be filmed in real places, providing it an authentic gravity that remains even as numerous sequences consist of a relatively small cast of characters looking at digital devices.

It follows the same logic which allowed the Bond franchise appear so consistently opulent for decades: Yes, explosive action and visual effects can display a big budget, but just providing a travelogue of sorts to viewers also feels deeply filmic. It’s also especially fitting for a story so dependent on the coexisting surface-level allure and try-hard grind of creating jealousy-worthy online content.

All of the characters visiting Bali, similar to those staying in Thailand in the original, seem to have access to impossibly chic contemporary villas; films exist concerning beach rescuers which don't feature this much aerial pool video. These individuals have to convincingly occupy these luxurious, remote places to emphasize the uneasy irony of how often each person — even the woman exacting revenge upon the online stars' narcissistic falseness — nevertheless spends plenty of time in the glow of their devices.

Balanced Depictions and Tech-Savvy Tension

Simultaneously, Harder hasn’t authored a rant targeting the vacuousness of the influencer industry. While it can be satisfying to watch CW manipulate various online personalities, and a Hitchcockian sense of identification allows us to wish she evades capture, Harder is relatively sympathetic to the major influencer characters. Previously, he keyed into the isolation Madison experienced during supposedly envy-worthy vacations. In this film, Harder seems to trust that just observing Jacob in action will make it clear that he’s peddling snake-oil masculinity to other doofuses; he avoids caricaturing the character. He even gives Jacob a degree of respect through depicting his true devotion to his partner; he’s a hypocrite, yet Ariana is a collaborator in his double standards, not someone exploited of it.

The other side of this balanced approach means it may occasionally seem that he is acknowledging elements of contemporary digital culture without investigating them further. This is especially true regarding how he introduces artificial intelligence into the plot, an intriguing development which misses the psychosexual kick it deserves. The retitled sequel of Influencers might give devotees of the original expectations of a larger-scale ante-upping, and the film does eventually provide that, with an appropriately wild final act. But before that, it resembles more a sleek Alfred Hitchcock movie than a frenzied, tech-addled De Palma-style shocker. Influencers’ extensive use of real-world locations may also be what prevents it from seeming like pure nightmare fuel. The world may be overrun with content-churning influencers, digital deception, and self-serving tourism, but reality itself is still here, for now.