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

“This whole affair reeks like a cheap TV movie,” observes a cynical commentator midway through the chilling follow-up Influencers. In the moment, he’s being dismissive in a calculated way toward an interviewee with an outlandish story he previously claimed he believed. Yet his description of the events on screen isn’t wrong. Superficially, a pair of films on demand chronicling a young woman who worms her way into the worlds of online influencers and then murders them seems like a modern-day version of a lurid but cable-ready weekly TV movie. The wild thing regarding Influencers is how much better it proves to be than plenty of its competition, regardless of screen size. It is precisely the thriller capable of giving other movies a serious bout of FOMO.

Recapping the Original and Establishing the Scene

2022’s Influencer follows the enigmatic CW (Cassandra Naud) while she methodically selects traveling alone influencer targets, entices them to their doom, and conceals those deaths (for a time) by seizing control of their online accounts. The movie leaves off (spoiler ahead) with CW stranded on an uninhabited island near the coast of Thailand, after her latest target, Madison (Emily Tennant), turns the tables on her.

This lends 2025's Influencers some early mystery, as returning writer-director Kurtis David Harder picks up with CW happily living with her girlfriend Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. On a journey marking the couple’s one-year anniversary, British influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) draws CW's attention and anger.

CW remarks to her partner that a person ought to attempt leaving a phone-addicted influencer in a place with no technology to 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 Global Pursuits

The narrative viewpoint shifts several more times, eventually clarifying those early scenes’ place in the timeline. The story revisits Madison, now exonerated for committing CW's offenses, yet still encounters doubt over her recounting of the events, including the murder of Madison’s boyfriend. We also follow Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), living in Bali and trying to boost his profile as half of a conservative-influencer duo alongside Ariana (Veronica Long), though his preferred medium is bro-heavy streams, as opposed to the Instagram photos that typically attract CW's interest.

The actor continues to be immensely captivating in the part, which seems especially custom-fit for her talents. (She even created CW's striking wardrobe.) Although the sequel’s screentime balance tips heavily toward CW — the first film felt more equally divided between her and Madison — it still functions as a tale of rival amateur detectives, with both women both use fabricated profiles, social media surveillance, and an apparently unlimited travel budget to pursue or evade each other. Of course, perhaps the unlimited budget isn’t necessary. Influencers have a talent for getting to explore luxurious locales at little cost, an ability that CW echoes through her more blatant scheming.

Ingenious Filmmaking and Visual Wanderlust

The creative team for Influencers seem similarly resourceful in locating beautiful places to visit, although they were likely more legitimate about it. The vast majority of the film appears to be shot on location, giving it a real-world weight that lingers even as numerous sequences involve a relatively small cast of characters staring at computer or phone screens.

It’s the same principle which allowed the James Bond movies look so persistently lavish over the years: Yes, explosive action and visual effects can show off a big budget, however simply offering a kind of visual tour for the audience also feels inherently cinematic. This is particularly appropriate for a narrative so rooted in the simultaneous superficial glamour and desperate hustle involved in producing jealousy-worthy digital content.

All of the characters visiting Bali, similar to 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 as much overhead swimming-pool video. The characters must believably inhabit these lush, remote places to emphasize the uncomfortable paradox of how frequently everyone — even the woman exacting revenge on the influencers’ self-centered phoniness — nevertheless devotes much time under the light of their screens.

Balanced Depictions and Digital-Age Suspense

Simultaneously, the director has not crafted a rant against the vacuousness of the influencer industry. Though it is gratifying to see CW manipulate various online personalities, and a sense reminiscent of Hitchcock of identification 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 dream getaways. Here, the director appears confident that merely watching Jacob at work will make it clear that he’s peddling false masculinity to other gullible men; he resists turning into a caricature the character further. He even gives Jacob a degree of respect through depicting his genuine loyalty to his partner; he’s a hypocrite, yet Ariana is a partner in his double standards, not a victim by it.

The flip side of this balanced approach means it may occasionally seem that he’s nodding at elements of modern online life without deeply exploring them further. This is especially true of the way he introduces artificial intelligence into the story, a fascinating turn which misses the psychological edge it should have. The retitled sequel for the film might give fans of the first movie hope for a larger-scale escalation, and the film does eventually provide exactly that, with an appropriately wild final act. But before that, it’s more like a polished Alfred Hitchcock movie than a wild-eyed, tech-addled De Palma-style shocker. Influencers’ heavy use of real-world locations may also be what prevents it from coming across like pure nightmare fuel. The world might be saturated with content-churning influencers, online fraud, and exploitative travel, but reality itself is still here, at least for now.