The Horror Follow-Up <em>Influencers</em> Could Give Other Streaming Thrillers Serious FOMO

“The entire situation smells like a cheap TV movie,” states a cynical commentator during the chilling follow-up Influencers. At that point, his tone is manipulatively dismissive of a guest with an bizarre tale he previously said he trusted. Yet his assessment of the events on screen isn't inaccurate. On its face, a pair of streaming movies about a woman who worms her way into the worlds of online influencers and then murders them seems like a modern-day version of a lurid yet cable-ready weekly TV movie. The wild thing regarding Influencers is how much better it is than plenty of the competition, irrespective of screen size. It is precisely the suspense film capable of giving its peers a serious bout of FOMO.

Revisiting the First Film and Establishing the Scene

The 2022 film Influencer follows the enigmatic CW (Cassandra Naud) while she methodically selects solo-traveling influencer targets, lures them to their deaths, and conceals those deaths (at least temporarily) by seizing control of their online accounts. The film concludes (spoiler ahead) with CW marooned on a deserted island off the coast of Thailand, after her most recent mark, Madison (Emily Tennant), reverses their roles against her.

This lends the 2025 Influencers some early mystery, when returning writer-director the director resumes with the character CW happily living alongside her partner Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. During a trip to celebrate the couple’s first anniversary, UK-based influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) draws CW’s eye and anger.

CW comments to Diane that a person should try stranding a device-obsessed influencer in a place with no technology and see whether they can survive. Is this an origin-story prequel? Did CW become extremist after witnessing the preferential treatment afforded one clout-chaser?

Shifting Perspectives and International Chases

The narrative viewpoint shifts several more times, ultimately revealing those early scenes’ place in the timeline. The story revisits Madison, who has been cleared of carrying out CW's offenses, 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 and trying to boost his profile as part of a right-wing-influencer duo alongside Ariana (Veronica Long), although his preferred medium involves masculine-focused livestreams, rather than the curated images that normally capture CW’s attention.

Naud remains immensely captivating in her role, which seems especially tailor-made to her strengths. (She also designed CW's striking wardrobe.) While the follow-up's focus leans heavily into CW — the original felt more equally divided between her and Madison — it still works as a story of rival amateur detectives, 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 isn’t necessary. Influencers have a knack for gaining access to posh places at little cost, a skill that CW echoes with her more overt scamming.

Ingenious Filmmaking and Cinematic Travelogue

The creative team for Influencers appear equally resourceful in locating beautiful places to visit, though they were presumably less nefarious in their methods. Most of the film seems to be shot on location, providing it an authentic gravity that lingers even as numerous sequences consist of a relatively small cast of characters staring at digital devices.

It follows the same logic that made the Bond franchise appear so persistently lavish for decades: Yes, big action and visual effects can display large spending, but simply offering a kind of visual tour to viewers also feels inherently cinematic. It’s also particularly appropriate for a story so rooted in the coexisting surface-level allure and try-hard grind involved in producing envy-inducing online content.

Every character visiting Bali, similar to those who were in Thailand in the first film, appear to enjoy entry to impossibly chic contemporary villas; there are movies concerning beach rescuers which don't feature this much aerial pool video. These individuals must believably occupy these luxurious, far-flung locations to emphasize the uneasy irony of how often each person — including the woman wreaking vengeance upon the online stars' narcissistic falseness — nonetheless devotes much time in the glow of their devices.

Nuanced Portrayals and Tech-Savvy Tension

Simultaneously, Harder hasn’t authored a screed targeting the emptiness of online fame. While it is satisfying to see CW exploit different internet celebrities, and a sense reminiscent of Hitchcock of identification lets us to wish she doesn’t get caught, Harder is relatively sympathetic to the major influencer characters. In the first movie, he tapped into the isolation Madison experienced while on supposedly envy-worthy vacations. In this film, the director appears confident that just observing Jacob in action will make it clear that he is selling false masculinity to other doofuses; he resists caricaturing the character further. He even grants Jacob a measure of dignity by showing his genuine loyalty to his partner; he is two-faced, but Ariana is a partner in his hypocrisy, not someone exploited by it.

The flip side of Harder’s even-keeled presentation is that it may occasionally seem as if he is acknowledging elements of modern online life without deeply exploring them. This is especially true of the way he brings AI into the plot, an intriguing development which misses the psychosexual kick it should have. The pluralized title of Influencers could offer fans of the first movie hope for a larger-scale ante-upping, and the film ultimately delivers that, with a suitably chaotic climax. But before that, it resembles more a polished Alfred Hitchcock movie than an frenzied, tech-addled De Palma-style shocker. Influencers’ extensive use of real-world locations may also be what keeps it from coming across like pure nightmare fuel. The world may be overrun with content-churning influencers, online fraud, and exploitative travel, but reality itself remains present, for now.