This Horror Follow-Up <em>Influencers</em> Will Give Competing Streaming Suspense Films a Bad Case of FOMO

“This whole affair reeks like a bad made-for-TV,” remarks an opportunistic podcaster midway through the chilling follow-up Influencers. At that point, he’s being manipulatively dismissive of a guest with an bizarre tale he once claimed he believed. Yet his description of the events in the movie isn’t wrong. Superficially, two streaming movies chronicling a young woman who worms her way into the worlds of social media stars before killing them seems like the 21st-century equivalent of a lurid but cable-ready Movie of the Week. The wild thing regarding Influencers is how much better it proves to be than plenty of the competition, regardless of where you watch it. It is precisely the thriller that should give other movies a bad case of FOMO.

Revisiting the First Film and Setting the Stage

The 2022 film Influencer follows the mysterious CW (Cassandra Naud) while she quietly chooses solo-traveling social media targets, lures them to their doom, and covers up those deaths (at least temporarily) by seizing control of their online accounts. The film leaves off (spoiler ahead) with CW stranded on a deserted island off the coast of Thailand, after her latest target, Madison (Emily Tennant), turns the tables against her.

This lends 2025's Influencers some early mystery, as returning filmmaker Kurtis David Harder resumes with the character CW contentedly residing alongside her partner Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. During a trip marking their first anniversary, British influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) catches CW’s eye and ire.

CW remarks to Diane that a person ought to attempt stranding a phone-addicted influencer in a place with no technology and see if they can make it. Are we witnessing an origin-story prequel? Was CW radicalized after witnessing the special treatment given to a single clout-chaser?

Shifting Perspectives and International Chases

The narrative viewpoint shifts several more times, ultimately revealing those early scenes’ chronological position. Harder catches up with Madison, who has been exonerated for committing CW’s crimes, yet still encounters doubt over her version of what happened, which includes the murder of Madison’s boyfriend. We also follow Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), living in Bali attempting to boost his profile as part of a conservative-influencer power couple alongside Ariana (Veronica Long), although his chosen platform is bro-heavy streams, rather than the Instagram photos that typically attract CW’s attention.

Naud remains immensely captivating in the part, which seems especially tailor-made to her strengths. (She even created CW's eye-catching wardrobe.) Although 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 dueling amateur detectives, with both women employ fake accounts, Insta-stalking, and a seemingly unlimited travel budget to chase or evade each other. Then again, perhaps the vast resources isn’t necessary. Online personalities possess a talent for gaining access to posh places at little cost, a skill which CW mirrors with her more overt scamming.

Ingenious Filmmaking and Visual Wanderlust

The filmmakers behind Influencers appear equally resourceful in locating beautiful places to visit, although they were presumably less nefarious about it. Most of the film seems to be shot on location, giving it an authentic gravity that lingers even when numerous sequences involve a handful of actors of people staring at computer or phone screens.

It’s the same principle that made the Bond franchise look so consistently opulent over the years: Yes, big action and visual effects can show off a big budget, however simply offering a kind of visual tour for the audience also feels deeply filmic. It’s also particularly appropriate for a narrative so rooted in the simultaneous superficial glamour and desperate hustle of creating envy-inducing online content.

All of the characters visiting Bali, like those who were in Thailand in the first film, seem to have entry to impossibly chic contemporary villas; there are movies concerning beach rescuers that don’t show off as much aerial pool footage. The characters have to convincingly inhabit these lush, remote places to emphasize the uncomfortable paradox of how often everyone — including the woman exacting revenge upon the online stars' narcissistic falseness — nonetheless 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 emptiness of the influencer industry. Though it is gratifying to watch CW manipulate various online personalities, and a Hitchcockian sense of alignment allows us to hope she doesn’t get caught, Harder is somewhat understanding of the major influencer characters. In the first movie, he keyed into the loneliness Madison felt while on ostensibly envy-worthy vacations. In this film, the director appears confident that just observing Jacob in action will reveal that he is selling snake-oil masculinity to other doofuses; he avoids turning into a caricature the character further. He even gives 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 of it.

The other side of this balanced approach is that it may occasionally seem that he’s nodding at elements of contemporary digital culture without deeply exploring them. This is especially true of the way he brings AI into the story, a fascinating turn which misses the psychological edge it deserves. The pluralized title of Influencers could offer devotees of the original expectations of an Aliens-style ante-upping, and the movie ultimately delivers exactly that, with an appropriately wild final act. However, initially, it’s more like a sleek Hitchcock thriller than a frenzied, tech-addled De Palma-style shocker. Influencers’ heavy use of real-world locations may also be what keeps it from coming across like pure nightmare fuel. The world might be saturated with content-churning influencers, digital deception, and self-serving tourism, but the world itself is still here, for now.