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“The entire situation stinks of a cheap TV movie,” states an opportunistic podcaster midway through the chilling follow-up Influencers. In the moment, his tone is dismissive in a calculated way of a guest whose outlandish story he once said he trusted. But his assessment of the events in the movie isn't inaccurate. On its face, two films on demand about a young woman who insinuates herself into the worlds of social media stars before killing them seems like the 21st-century equivalent of a tawdry but network-approved weekly TV movie. The surprising aspect about Influencers remains how much better it is than plenty of the competition, regardless of screen size. It is precisely the thriller that should give its peers a serious bout of FOMO.

Recapping the Original and Setting the Stage

2022’s Influencer tracks the mysterious CW (Cassandra Naud) while she quietly chooses solo-traveling social media targets, entices them to their doom, and conceals those murders (for a time) by seizing control of their online accounts. The film concludes (spoiler ahead) with CW marooned on a deserted island near the coast of Thailand, following her most recent mark, Madison (Emily Tennant), turns the tables against her.

This provides the 2025 Influencers a degree of mystery, when returning writer-director the director picks up with CW happily living with her girlfriend Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. During a trip to celebrate their first anniversary, British influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) catches CW's attention and ire.

CW comments to her partner that someone should try leaving a device-obsessed influencer somewhere without any devices and see whether they can survive. Is this an origin-story prequel? Did CW become extremist after witnessing the preferential treatment given to a single clout-chaser?

Shifting Perspectives and Global Pursuits

The story’s perspective shifts several more times, eventually clarifying those introductory moments' chronological position. The story revisits Madison, now exonerated for carrying out CW's offenses, but still faces doubt over her recounting of the events, which includes the murder of her boyfriend. We also follow Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), based in Bali attempting to juice his career as part of a conservative-influencer duo with Ariana (Veronica Long), although his chosen platform involves masculine-focused livestreams, as opposed to the curated images that typically attract CW’s attention.

The actor continues to be immensely captivating in her role, which seems particularly tailor-made to her strengths. (She also designed CW's eye-catching outfits.) Although the sequel’s focus leans heavily into CW — the original felt more equally divided between the two women — it still functions as a tale of dueling amateur detectives, as Madison and CW employ fake accounts, social media surveillance, and a seemingly limitless travel fund to chase and/or escape each other. Of course, maybe the vast resources aren't needed. Online personalities possess a talent for gaining access to posh places at little cost, a skill which CW mirrors through her more blatant scheming.

Ingenious Filmmaking and Visual Wanderlust

The creative team for Influencers appear equally resourceful about finding beautiful places to film, although they were likely less nefarious in their methods. Most of the movie seems to be shot on location, providing it an authentic gravity that lingers even as numerous sequences involve a handful of actors of people looking at computer or phone screens.

It follows the same logic that made the James Bond movies appear so consistently opulent for decades: Yes, explosive action and visual effects can display a big budget, but simply offering a travelogue of sorts for the audience also feels inherently cinematic. It’s also especially fitting for a story so dependent on the coexisting surface-level allure and desperate hustle of creating envy-inducing digital content.

Every character in Bali, like those staying in Thailand in the original, seem to have access to unbelievably stylish modern bungalows; films exist concerning beach rescuers which don't feature this much aerial pool video. These individuals must believably inhabit these lush, far-flung locations to emphasize the uneasy irony of how often each person — including the woman wreaking vengeance on the influencers’ self-centered phoniness — nevertheless spends plenty of time in the glow of their screens.

Nuanced Portrayals and Tech-Savvy Tension

Simultaneously, the director has not crafted a rant targeting the vacuousness of the influencer industry. While it can be gratifying to watch CW exploit different internet celebrities, and a Hitchcockian sense of identification allows us to hope she evades capture, the filmmaker is somewhat sympathetic to the key influencer figures. Previously, he keyed into the loneliness Madison experienced during supposedly dream getaways. Here, the director appears confident that just observing Jacob at work will reveal that he is selling snake-oil masculinity to other gullible men; he avoids turning into a caricature the character. He even grants Jacob a degree of respect by showing his true devotion to his girlfriend; he’s a hypocrite, yet Ariana is a partner in his hypocrisy, not someone exploited by it.

The flip side of this balanced approach is that it can sometimes appear as if he’s nodding at elements of modern online life without investigating them. This is particularly evident regarding how he introduces artificial intelligence into the story, an intriguing development which misses the psychosexual kick it deserves. The pluralized title of Influencers could offer fans of the first movie expectations of an Aliens-style ante-upping, and the film ultimately delivers that, with a suitably chaotic climax. But before that, it’s more like a polished Hitchcock thriller than a wild-eyed, technology-obsessed De Palma-style shocker. Influencers’ heavy use of real-world locations may also be what keeps it from seeming like pure nightmare fuel. The world may be overrun with content-churning influencers, online fraud, and exploitative travel, but reality itself remains present, at least for now.