This Horror Follow-Up <em>Influencers</em> Is Set to Give Other Streaming Thrillers a Bad Case of FOMO

“This whole affair stinks like a bad made-for-TV,” states a cynical commentator during the horror sequel Influencers. In the moment, he’s being dismissive in a calculated way of a guest whose outlandish story he previously said he trusted. But his assessment of the events on screen isn't inaccurate. On its face, a pair of films on demand chronicling a young woman who insinuates herself into the lives of social media stars and then murders them seems like a modern-day version of a lurid yet cable-ready Movie of the Week. The surprising aspect about Influencers remains how much better it is than plenty of its competition, regardless of where you watch it. It’s the kind of thriller capable of giving other movies a bad case of FOMO.

Revisiting the First Film and Establishing the Scene

2022’s Influencer tracks the mysterious CW (Cassandra Naud) as she methodically selects traveling alone influencer targets, lures them to their doom, and covers up those murders (for a time) by seizing control of their socials. The movie leaves off (spoiler ahead) with CW stranded on an uninhabited island off the coast of Thailand, after her most recent mark, Madison (Emily Tennant), turns the tables against her.

This lends the 2025 Influencers some early mystery, as returning writer-director the director picks up with the character CW contentedly residing with her girlfriend Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. During a trip to celebrate the couple’s first anniversary, UK-based influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) catches CW’s eye and ire.

CW remarks to her partner that a person should try leaving a device-obsessed influencer somewhere with no technology and see if they can make it. Is this a backstory prequel? Did CW become extremist by seeing the preferential treatment given to one fame-seeker?

Shifting Perspectives and Global Pursuits

The story’s perspective changes multiple times, eventually clarifying those early scenes’ place in the timeline. The story revisits Madison, who has been exonerated for committing CW's offenses, yet still encounters suspicion over her version of what happened, including the killing of Madison’s boyfriend. We also follow Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), living in Bali attempting to boost his profile as part of a right-wing-influencer duo with Ariana (Veronica Long), although his preferred medium involves masculine-focused livestreams, rather than the curated images that normally attract CW's interest.

Naud remains terrifically magnetic in the part, a role that appears especially custom-fit for her talents. (She even created CW's eye-catching outfits.) While the follow-up's focus leans heavily into CW — the original seemed more balanced between her and Madison — it still works as a tale of dueling amateur detectives, as Madison and CW employ fake accounts, social media surveillance, and a seemingly limitless travel fund to pursue and/or escape each other. Of course, perhaps the vast resources isn’t necessary. Influencers have a talent for gaining access to posh places without paying much, an ability that CW echoes through her more blatant scheming.

Ingenious Filmmaking and Cinematic Travelogue

The filmmakers behind Influencers seem similarly resourceful about finding beautiful places to visit, although they were presumably more legitimate in their methods. The vast majority of the film seems to be filmed in real places, giving it a real-world weight that lingers even as numerous sequences involve a handful of actors of people staring at digital devices.

It’s the same principle that made the Bond franchise look so persistently lavish for decades: Indeed, explosive action and special effects can display a big budget, however simply offering a kind of visual tour for the audience also seems deeply filmic. It’s also particularly appropriate for a narrative so dependent on the coexisting superficial glamour and desperate hustle of creating envy-inducing digital content.

All of the characters visiting Bali, like those staying in Thailand in the first film, appear to enjoy entry to impossibly chic contemporary villas; there are movies about lifeguards that don’t show off as much aerial pool footage. These individuals have to convincingly occupy these lush, remote places to highlight the uneasy irony of how often everyone — even the woman wreaking vengeance upon the online stars' narcissistic falseness — nonetheless spends plenty of time under the light of their devices.

Balanced Depictions and Tech-Savvy Tension

At the same time, Harder hasn’t authored a rant against the vacuousness of the influencer industry. Though it is satisfying to watch CW exploit various online personalities, and a sense reminiscent of Hitchcock of alignment allows us to hope she doesn’t get caught, the filmmaker is somewhat sympathetic to the major influencer characters. In the first movie, he tapped into the loneliness Madison felt while on supposedly dream getaways. In this film, Harder seems to trust that merely watching Jacob in action will reveal that he’s peddling snake-oil masculinity to other doofuses; he avoids caricaturing the character. He even grants Jacob a degree of respect through depicting his true devotion to his girlfriend; he’s a hypocrite, yet Ariana is a collaborator in his hypocrisy, not a victim of it.

The flip side of this balanced approach means it may occasionally seem that he’s nodding at elements of contemporary digital culture without investigating them further. This is especially true regarding how he introduces artificial intelligence into the story, an intriguing development that lacks the psychological edge it deserves. The pluralized title of Influencers might give devotees of the original expectations of a larger-scale escalation, and the movie ultimately delivers that, with an appropriately wild final act. However, initially, it’s more like a polished Alfred Hitchcock movie than an frenzied, tech-addled Brian De Palma thriller. Influencers’ extensive use of real-world locations may also be what prevents it from coming across like pure nightmare fuel. Our society might be saturated with content-churning influencers, digital deception, and exploitative travel, but the world itself is still here, at least for now.