This Horror Follow-Up <em>Influencers</em> Will Give Other Streaming Suspense Films Serious FOMO

“This whole affair stinks of a cheap made-for-TV,” observes an opportunistic podcaster midway through the chilling follow-up Influencers. At that point, his tone is dismissive in a calculated way toward an interviewee with an outlandish story he once claimed he believed. But his description of what’s happening in the movie isn’t wrong. On its face, a pair of films on demand chronicling a woman who insinuates herself into the lives of online influencers and then murders them seems like the 21st-century equivalent of a lurid but network-approved Movie of the Week. The surprising aspect regarding Influencers is just how superior it is than plenty of the competition, irrespective of screen size. It’s the kind of suspense film that should give other movies a serious bout of FOMO.

Revisiting the Original and Setting the Stage

2022’s Influencer tracks the mysterious CW (Cassandra Naud) as 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 socials. The film concludes (spoiler ahead) with CW stranded on a deserted island near the coast of Thailand, following her latest target, Madison (Emily Tennant), turns the tables against her.

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

CW remarks to Diane that a person should try leaving a device-obsessed influencer in a place with no technology to see whether they can make it. Is this an origin-story prequel? Did CW become extremist by seeing the preferential treatment afforded a single fame-seeker?

Evolving Viewpoints and Global Pursuits

The story’s perspective changes multiple times, eventually clarifying those introductory moments' place in the timeline. The story revisits Madison, who has been cleared of carrying out CW’s crimes, but still faces doubt regarding her recounting of what happened, which includes the murder of her boyfriend. We also follow Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), living in Bali attempting to juice his career as half of a conservative-influencer power couple alongside Ariana (Veronica Long), although his preferred medium involves masculine-focused livestreams, as opposed to the curated images that typically attract CW’s attention.

Naud remains immensely captivating in her role, which seems especially tailor-made for her talents. (She also designed CW's eye-catching wardrobe.) Although the follow-up's focus leans heavily into CW — the original felt more equally divided between the two women — it still works as a tale of dueling investigators, with both women both use fabricated profiles, social media surveillance, and a seemingly unlimited travel budget to chase and/or escape each other. Of course, maybe the vast resources isn’t necessary. Online personalities possess a knack for gaining access to luxurious locales without paying much, a skill that CW echoes with her more overt scheming.

Resourceful Production and Cinematic Travelogue

The filmmakers behind Influencers seem similarly resourceful about finding stunning locations to film, although they were presumably less nefarious in their methods. Most of the movie appears to be filmed in real places, giving it an authentic gravity that remains even when numerous sequences involve a handful of actors of characters looking at digital devices.

It follows the same logic which allowed the Bond franchise look so consistently opulent over the years: Indeed, big action and visual effects can display large spending, however simply offering a travelogue of sorts to viewers also feels deeply filmic. It’s also especially fitting for a story so dependent on the coexisting surface-level allure and desperate hustle involved in producing envy-inducing digital content.

Every character visiting Bali, like those who were in Thailand in the first film, appear to enjoy entry to unbelievably stylish modern bungalows; there are movies about lifeguards that don’t show off this much overhead swimming-pool video. The characters have to convincingly occupy these luxurious, remote places to highlight the uneasy irony of how frequently everyone — even the woman exacting revenge upon the online stars' narcissistic falseness — nonetheless devotes much time under the light of their screens.

Balanced Depictions and Digital-Age Suspense

At the same time, Harder hasn’t authored a screed against the vacuousness of the influencer industry. Though it is gratifying to watch CW manipulate different internet celebrities, and a Hitchcockian sense of identification allows us to wish she doesn’t get caught, the filmmaker is relatively sympathetic to the key influencer figures. Previously, he keyed into the loneliness Madison felt while on supposedly envy-worthy vacations. Here, the director appears confident that just observing Jacob at work will make it clear that he is selling snake-oil masculinity to other gullible men; he resists caricaturing the character further. He even gives Jacob a degree of respect through depicting his genuine loyalty to his girlfriend; he is two-faced, but Ariana is a collaborator in his double standards, not someone exploited of it.

The other side of Harder’s even-keeled presentation is that it can sometimes appear that he’s nodding at bits of modern online life without investigating them. This is particularly evident of the way he introduces artificial intelligence into the plot, an intriguing development that lacks the psychological edge it deserves. The retitled sequel for the film might give devotees of the original expectations of an Aliens-style ante-upping, and the film does eventually provide exactly that, with an appropriately wild final act. However, initially, it’s more like a polished Hitchcock thriller than a frenzied, technology-obsessed De Palma-style shocker. Influencers’ heavy use of actual places may also be what keeps it from seeming like utter horror. Our society might be saturated with always-online creators, digital deception, and self-serving tourism, but reality itself remains present, for now.