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“The entire situation reeks like a cheap made-for-TV,” observes a cynical commentator midway through the chilling follow-up Influencers. In the moment, he’s being dismissive in a calculated way of a guest with an outlandish story he previously said he trusted. Yet his assessment of the events on screen isn’t wrong. On its face, two films on demand about a young woman who insinuates herself into the worlds of social media stars before killing them feels like the 21st-century equivalent of a tawdry yet cable-ready weekly TV movie. The wild thing regarding Influencers is how much better it proves to be compared to much of the competition, irrespective of where you watch it. It’s the kind of thriller that should give its peers a bad case of FOMO.

Revisiting the Original and Setting the Stage

2022’s Influencer tracks the enigmatic CW (Cassandra Naud) while she quietly chooses solo-traveling social media targets, lures them to their deaths, and covers up those murders (for a time) by taking control of their online accounts. The movie leaves off (spoiler ahead) with CW stranded on a deserted 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 filmmaker the director 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 ire.

CW remarks to her partner that a person ought to attempt stranding a phone-addicted online personality somewhere without any devices to see if they can make it. Are we witnessing a backstory prequel? Did CW become extremist by seeing the preferential treatment afforded one fame-seeker?

Shifting Perspectives and Global Pursuits

The narrative viewpoint shifts several more times, ultimately revealing those early scenes’ place in the timeline. The story revisits Madison, who has been exonerated for committing CW's offenses, but still faces doubt regarding her recounting of what happened, which includes the killing of her boyfriend. The film also follows Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), living in Bali and trying to juice his career as part of a right-wing-influencer duo alongside Ariana (Veronica Long), although his chosen platform is bro-heavy streams, as opposed to the Instagram photos that normally capture CW’s attention.

Naud remains immensely captivating in her role, which seems especially tailor-made to her strengths. (She even created CW's striking wardrobe.) While the follow-up's screentime balance tips heavily toward CW — the original felt more equally divided between her and Madison — it still works as a tale of dueling investigators, as Madison and CW employ fake accounts, social media surveillance, and a seemingly unlimited travel budget to pursue or evade each other. Then again, maybe the vast resources aren't needed. Influencers have a talent for getting to explore luxurious locales without paying much, a skill which CW mirrors through her more blatant scheming.

Resourceful Production and Cinematic Travelogue

The creative team for Influencers appear equally resourceful in locating stunning locations to film, though they were likely less nefarious about it. Most of the film seems to be shot on location, providing it a real-world weight that lingers even when many scenes involve a relatively small cast of people looking at digital devices.

It follows the same logic which allowed the James Bond movies appear so consistently opulent for decades: Indeed, big action and special effects can show off a big budget, however simply offering a kind of visual tour to viewers also feels deeply filmic. This is especially fitting for a story so rooted in the simultaneous surface-level allure and desperate hustle of creating jealousy-worthy online content.

All of the characters visiting Bali, similar to those staying in Thailand in the original, appear to enjoy entry to impossibly chic contemporary villas; films exist concerning beach rescuers that don’t show off as much aerial pool video. The characters must believably occupy these lush, far-flung locations to emphasize the uneasy irony of how often each person — even the woman exacting revenge upon the online stars' self-centered phoniness — nevertheless spends plenty of time in the glow of their devices.

Balanced Depictions and Digital-Age Suspense

At the same time, Harder hasn’t authored a screed against the emptiness of online fame. While it is satisfying to watch CW exploit various online personalities, and a sense reminiscent of Hitchcock of identification lets us to wish she evades capture, the filmmaker is somewhat understanding of the major influencer characters. Previously, he tapped into the loneliness Madison felt during supposedly envy-worthy vacations. Here, Harder seems to trust that just observing Jacob in action will reveal that he is selling snake-oil masculinity to other gullible men; he avoids turning into a caricature the character. He even gives Jacob a degree of respect by showing his true devotion to his partner; he is two-faced, but Ariana is a collaborator in his double standards, not someone exploited by it.

The flip side of Harder’s even-keeled presentation means it may occasionally seem that he’s nodding at bits of contemporary digital culture without investigating them. This is particularly evident of the way he brings AI into the story, an intriguing development which misses the psychological edge it deserves. The retitled sequel of Influencers might give devotees of the original expectations of a larger-scale escalation, and the movie ultimately delivers that, with a suitably chaotic climax. But before that, it resembles more a sleek Alfred Hitchcock movie than an wild-eyed, technology-obsessed De Palma-style shocker. Influencers’ heavy use of actual places may also be what prevents it from coming across like pure nightmare fuel. The world might be saturated with content-churning influencers, online fraud, and self-serving tourism, but the world itself remains present, at least for now.