This Horror Follow-Up <em>Influencers</em> Is Set to Give Other Streaming Thrillers Serious FOMO

“The entire situation reeks of a bad made-for-TV,” remarks a cynical podcaster midway through the chilling follow-up Influencers. In the moment, he’s being dismissive in a calculated way of a guest with an bizarre tale he once said he trusted. Yet his description of what’s happening in the movie isn’t wrong. On its face, two films on demand about a woman who worms her way into the lives of social media stars and then murders them seems like the 21st-century equivalent of a lurid but network-approved Movie of the Week. The wild thing regarding Influencers is just how superior it proves to be compared to much of the competition, irrespective of screen size. It is precisely the suspense film capable of giving other movies a bad case of FOMO.

Revisiting the First Film and Setting the Stage

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

This lends 2025's Influencers a degree of ambiguity, as returning writer-director Kurtis David Harder picks up with CW happily living with her girlfriend Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. On a journey to celebrate their one-year anniversary, UK-based influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) catches CW’s eye and ire.

CW remarks to her partner that a person ought to attempt stranding a device-obsessed online personality in a place without any devices and see whether they can make it. Is this a backstory prequel? Was CW radicalized after witnessing the preferential treatment afforded a single fame-seeker?

Evolving Viewpoints and Global Pursuits

The narrative viewpoint shifts several more times, ultimately revealing those early scenes’ place in the timeline. The story revisits Madison, now cleared of committing CW's offenses, but still faces doubt regarding her version of the events, which includes the murder of her boyfriend. The film also follows 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, rather than the curated images that typically attract CW’s attention.

The actor continues to be terrifically magnetic in her role, which seems especially tailor-made to her strengths. (She even created CW's striking outfits.) Although the sequel’s focus tips heavily toward CW — the first film felt more equally divided between the two women — it still functions as a story of dueling amateur detectives, as Madison and CW both use fake accounts, social media surveillance, and an apparently limitless travel fund to chase or evade each other. Of course, maybe the vast resources isn’t necessary. Online personalities possess a talent for gaining access to posh places at little cost, an ability that CW echoes through her more blatant scheming.

Ingenious Filmmaking and Cinematic Travelogue

The creative team for Influencers appear equally ingenious in locating beautiful places to visit, although they were likely more legitimate in their methods. Most of the film seems to be shot on location, giving it an authentic gravity that lingers even when many scenes consist of a relatively small cast of characters staring at digital devices.

It follows the same logic which allowed the Bond franchise appear so consistently opulent over the years: Yes, big action and visual effects can display large spending, however simply offering a travelogue of sorts to viewers also seems deeply filmic. It’s also particularly appropriate for a narrative so rooted in the coexisting surface-level allure and try-hard grind involved in producing envy-inducing digital content.

Every character visiting Bali, like those who were in Thailand in the original, seem to have access to unbelievably stylish modern bungalows; films exist about lifeguards which don't feature as much aerial pool footage. The characters must believably inhabit these lush, remote places to emphasize the uneasy irony of how frequently each person — including the woman wreaking vengeance upon the online stars' narcissistic falseness — nonetheless spends plenty of time under the light of their devices.

Nuanced Portrayals and Digital-Age Suspense

At the same time, Harder hasn’t authored a screed targeting the vacuousness of the influencer industry. While it can be gratifying to see CW exploit various online personalities, and a Hitchcockian sense of alignment lets us to wish she evades capture, Harder is relatively sympathetic to the key influencer figures. Previously, he keyed into the isolation Madison felt during ostensibly envy-worthy vacations. In this film, Harder seems to trust that merely watching Jacob in action will reveal that he is selling false masculinity to other gullible men; he resists caricaturing the character. He even grants Jacob a degree of respect by showing his genuine loyalty to his partner; he’s a hypocrite, but Ariana is a collaborator in his hypocrisy, not a victim of it.

The flip side of this balanced approach means it can sometimes appear as if he’s nodding at elements of modern online life without investigating them further. This is particularly evident of the way he introduces artificial intelligence into the plot, a fascinating turn which misses the psychological edge it deserves. The pluralized title for the film might give devotees of the original expectations of a larger-scale ante-upping, and the film does eventually provide exactly that, with an appropriately chaotic climax. However, initially, it resembles more a polished Hitchcock thriller than a frenzied, tech-addled Brian De Palma thriller. Influencers’ heavy use of actual places may also be what prevents it from coming across like utter horror. The world might be saturated with always-online creators, online fraud, and exploitative travel, but reality itself remains present, for now.