This Horror Sequel <em>Influencers</em> Is Set to Give Other Digital Suspense Films Serious FOMO

“Everything about this smells of a cheap TV movie,” remarks an opportunistic podcaster during the chilling follow-up Influencers. At that point, his tone is manipulatively dismissive of a guest whose bizarre tale he once said he trusted. Yet his description of the events in the movie isn't inaccurate. Superficially, a pair of streaming movies about a woman who insinuates herself into the lives of online influencers and then murders them seems like the 21st-century equivalent of a lurid yet cable-ready weekly TV movie. The wild thing regarding Influencers remains just how superior it is compared to much of the competition, regardless of where you watch it. It is precisely the thriller that should give its peers a bad case of FOMO.

Revisiting the Original and Setting the Stage

2022’s Influencer follows the enigmatic CW (Cassandra Naud) as she methodically selects solo-traveling social media targets, entices them to their deaths, and conceals those murders (for a time) by seizing control of their online accounts. The film leaves off (spoiler ahead) with CW marooned on an uninhabited island off the coast of Thailand, after her most recent mark, Madison (Emily Tennant), turns the tables on her.

This provides 2025's Influencers a degree of ambiguity, as returning writer-director the director picks up with the character CW happily living alongside her partner Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. On a journey marking the couple’s first anniversary, British influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) draws CW’s eye and ire.

CW remarks to her partner that a person should try stranding a device-obsessed influencer in a place without any devices to see whether they can make it. Is this an origin-story prequel? Was CW radicalized by seeing the preferential treatment given to a single fame-seeker?

Shifting Perspectives and International Chases

The narrative viewpoint changes multiple times, ultimately revealing those early scenes’ chronological position. Harder catches up with Madison, who has been exonerated for committing CW's offenses, yet still encounters doubt regarding her recounting of the events, including the killing of Madison’s boyfriend. We also follow Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), living in Bali attempting to juice his career as half of a right-wing-influencer duo alongside Ariana (Veronica Long), although his preferred medium involves masculine-focused livestreams, as opposed to the Instagram photos that typically capture CW’s attention.

The actor continues to be immensely captivating in the part, a role that appears especially tailor-made for her talents. (She even created CW's eye-catching wardrobe.) Although the follow-up's screentime balance leans heavily into CW — the original seemed more balanced between the two women — it still works as a story of dueling amateur detectives, as Madison and CW both use fabricated profiles, social media surveillance, and an apparently unlimited travel budget to pursue and/or escape each other. Then again, perhaps the unlimited budget isn’t necessary. Influencers have a knack for gaining access to luxurious locales without paying much, a skill which CW mirrors through her more blatant scheming.

Resourceful Production and Cinematic Travelogue

The filmmakers behind Influencers appear equally ingenious in locating stunning locations to visit, though they were likely less nefarious in their methods. Most of the movie seems to be shot on location, giving it an authentic gravity that remains even when many scenes involve a handful of actors of people looking at digital devices.

It’s the same principle that made the Bond franchise look so consistently opulent for decades: Indeed, big action and special effects can display large spending, but just providing a travelogue of sorts to viewers also feels deeply filmic. This is especially fitting for a narrative so rooted in the simultaneous superficial glamour and try-hard grind involved in producing envy-inducing digital content.

Every character in Bali, like those staying in Thailand in the first film, seem to have entry to impossibly chic modern bungalows; films exist about lifeguards which don't feature this much aerial pool footage. The characters must believably inhabit these luxurious, far-flung locations to emphasize the uncomfortable paradox of how frequently each person — even the woman exacting revenge on the influencers’ narcissistic falseness — nevertheless devotes much time under the light of their devices.

Nuanced Portrayals and Tech-Savvy Tension

Simultaneously, Harder hasn’t authored a rant against the vacuousness of online fame. Though it can be satisfying to watch CW manipulate various online personalities, and a Hitchcockian sense of identification allows us to wish she evades capture, the filmmaker is relatively sympathetic to the major influencer characters. In the first movie, he keyed into the isolation 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 caricaturing the character further. He even grants Jacob a degree of respect through depicting his true devotion to his girlfriend; he’s a hypocrite, but Ariana is a partner in his double standards, not someone exploited by it.

The flip side of Harder’s even-keeled presentation means it may occasionally seem as if he’s nodding at bits of modern online life without investigating them. This is particularly evident of the way he brings AI into the plot, an intriguing development which misses the psychosexual kick it should have. The pluralized title for the film could offer fans of the first movie hope for a larger-scale ante-upping, and the movie does eventually provide that, with a suitably chaotic climax. But before that, it resembles more a sleek Hitchcock thriller than an frenzied, technology-obsessed Brian De Palma thriller. Influencers’ heavy use of real-world locations might also be what keeps it from seeming like pure nightmare fuel. Our society may be overrun with content-churning influencers, online fraud, and exploitative travel, but reality itself is still here, at least for now.