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“Everything about this smells of a bad made-for-TV,” states an opportunistic podcaster during the chilling follow-up Influencers. In the moment, he’s being manipulatively dismissive toward an interviewee with an outlandish story he once claimed he believed. Yet his assessment of what’s happening in the movie isn't inaccurate. Superficially, two films on demand chronicling a young woman who worms her way into the worlds of online influencers and then murders them seems like the 21st-century equivalent of a tawdry but network-approved Movie of the Week. The wild thing about Influencers is how much better it is than plenty of its competition, regardless of screen size. It is precisely the thriller capable of giving other movies a bad case of FOMO.

Recapping the Original and Establishing the Scene

2022’s Influencer follows the enigmatic CW (Cassandra Naud) as she quietly chooses traveling alone influencer targets, lures them to their doom, and covers up those deaths (at least temporarily) by taking control of their online accounts. The movie concludes (spoiler ahead) with CW stranded on a deserted island off the coast of Thailand, following her most recent mark, Madison (Emily Tennant), reverses their roles on her.

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

CW remarks to Diane that someone ought to attempt stranding a device-obsessed online personality somewhere with no technology to see whether they can make it. Is this an origin-story prequel? Was CW radicalized after witnessing the preferential treatment afforded a single clout-chaser?

Shifting Perspectives and International Chases

The narrative viewpoint changes multiple times, ultimately revealing those early scenes’ place in the timeline. The story revisits Madison, who has been exonerated for carrying out CW’s crimes, but still faces suspicion regarding her recounting of what happened, which includes the murder of her boyfriend. We also follow Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), based in Bali attempting to juice his career as half of a conservative-influencer power couple with Ariana (Veronica Long), though his preferred medium is bro-heavy streams, rather than the Instagram photos that typically attract CW's interest.

The actor continues to be terrifically magnetic in her role, a role that appears particularly tailor-made for her talents. (She also designed CW's striking wardrobe.) While the follow-up's screentime balance tips heavily toward CW — the original seemed more balanced between her and Madison — it still works as a tale of rival amateur detectives, as Madison and CW employ fake accounts, Insta-stalking, and an apparently limitless travel fund to pursue and/or escape each other. Of course, perhaps the vast resources isn’t necessary. Influencers have a knack for getting to explore luxurious locales without paying much, an ability which CW mirrors through her more blatant scamming.

Ingenious Filmmaking and Visual Wanderlust

The creative team for Influencers appear equally ingenious in locating beautiful places to visit, although they were likely less nefarious about it. Most of the movie appears to be shot on location, giving it an authentic gravity that remains even as numerous sequences involve a handful of actors of people staring at computer or phone screens.

It’s the same principle that made the James Bond movies appear so persistently lavish over the years: Indeed, explosive action and special effects can show off large spending, however just providing a kind of visual tour to viewers also seems deeply filmic. This is particularly appropriate for a narrative so rooted in the simultaneous superficial glamour and desperate hustle of creating jealousy-worthy online content.

Every character in Bali, similar to those staying in Thailand in the original, seem to have access to impossibly chic contemporary villas; films exist concerning beach rescuers that don’t show off this much aerial pool footage. These individuals must believably inhabit these lush, far-flung locations to emphasize the uncomfortable paradox of how frequently each person — even the woman exacting revenge upon the online stars' self-centered phoniness — nevertheless devotes much time under the light of their screens.

Nuanced Portrayals and Tech-Savvy Tension

At the same time, the director has not crafted a screed against the vacuousness of the influencer industry. While it can be satisfying to see CW manipulate various online personalities, and a Hitchcockian sense of alignment allows us to hope she doesn’t get caught, the filmmaker is relatively sympathetic to the key influencer figures. In the first movie, he tapped into the loneliness Madison experienced during supposedly dream getaways. Here, Harder seems to trust that just observing Jacob in action will reveal that he’s peddling snake-oil masculinity to other doofuses; he avoids caricaturing the character. He even gives Jacob a degree of respect by showing his genuine loyalty to his partner; he is two-faced, but Ariana is a partner in his double standards, not someone exploited by it.

The flip side of Harder’s even-keeled presentation is that it can sometimes appear as if he’s nodding at elements of contemporary digital culture without deeply exploring them further. This is especially true of the way he introduces artificial intelligence into the story, an intriguing development which misses the psychosexual kick it should have. The pluralized title for the film could offer devotees of the original expectations of a larger-scale ante-upping, and the movie ultimately delivers that, with an appropriately chaotic climax. However, initially, it’s more like a sleek Alfred Hitchcock movie than a wild-eyed, tech-addled De Palma-style shocker. Influencers’ extensive use of real-world locations may also be what prevents it from seeming like utter horror. The world might be saturated with always-online creators, online fraud, and exploitative travel, but the world itself remains present, for now.