This Horror Sequel <em>Influencers</em> Is Set to Give Competing Streaming Thrillers Serious FOMO

“Everything about this smells of a bad TV movie,” states an opportunistic podcaster midway through the chilling follow-up Influencers. At that point, he’s being dismissive in a calculated way of a guest whose outlandish story he once claimed he believed. Yet his assessment of what’s happening on screen isn't inaccurate. Superficially, a pair of films on demand chronicling a young woman who worms her way into the lives of social media stars before killing them feels like a modern-day version of a tawdry yet network-approved weekly TV movie. The wild thing regarding Influencers remains how much better it is compared to much of its competition, regardless of where you watch it. It is precisely the thriller capable of giving its peers a bad case of FOMO.

Recapping the First Film and Establishing the Scene

2022’s Influencer follows the mysterious CW (Cassandra Naud) while she methodically selects traveling alone influencer targets, entices them to their deaths, and conceals those deaths (for a time) by seizing control of their online accounts. The movie concludes (spoiler ahead) with CW marooned on an uninhabited island near the coast of Thailand, following her most recent mark, Madison (Emily Tennant), turns the tables against her.

This lends the 2025 Influencers some early ambiguity, as returning writer-director the director resumes with CW contentedly residing with her girlfriend Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. On a journey to celebrate the couple’s first anniversary, British influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) draws CW’s eye and anger.

CW remarks to Diane that someone ought to attempt stranding a phone-addicted online personality somewhere with no technology to see whether they can survive. Are we witnessing an origin-story prequel? Did CW become extremist by seeing the preferential treatment afforded a single clout-chaser?

Shifting Perspectives and International Chases

The narrative viewpoint changes multiple times, eventually clarifying those early scenes’ place in the timeline. The story revisits Madison, now cleared of carrying out CW's offenses, but still faces doubt regarding her version of what happened, including the murder of her boyfriend. The film also follows Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), living in Bali and trying to juice his career as part of a right-wing-influencer duo alongside Ariana (Veronica Long), though his preferred medium is bro-heavy streams, rather than the Instagram photos that typically attract CW’s attention.

The actor continues to be immensely captivating in the part, which seems particularly tailor-made to her strengths. (She even created CW's striking wardrobe.) Although the follow-up's screentime balance leans heavily into CW — the first film felt more equally divided between the two women — it still functions as a tale of dueling investigators, as Madison and CW both use fake accounts, social media surveillance, and a seemingly limitless travel fund to pursue or evade one another. Of course, perhaps the vast resources isn’t necessary. Influencers have a talent for getting to explore posh places without paying much, an ability which CW mirrors through her more blatant scamming.

Ingenious Filmmaking and Visual Wanderlust

The creative team for Influencers seem similarly resourceful in locating beautiful places to visit, though they were presumably less nefarious about it. Most of the movie appears to be filmed in real places, providing it an authentic gravity that remains even as numerous sequences consist of a handful of actors of characters staring at computer or phone screens.

It follows the same logic that made the James Bond movies look so consistently opulent over the years: Yes, big action and visual effects can show off a big budget, but just providing a travelogue of sorts for the audience also feels deeply filmic. It’s also especially fitting for a narrative so dependent on the coexisting superficial glamour and desperate hustle of creating jealousy-worthy online content.

All of the characters in Bali, like those who were in Thailand in the original, appear to enjoy access to impossibly chic contemporary villas; films exist concerning beach rescuers that don’t show off as much overhead swimming-pool video. These individuals must believably occupy these lush, far-flung locations to emphasize the uneasy irony of how frequently each person — including the woman exacting revenge on the influencers’ self-centered phoniness — nevertheless spends plenty of time under the light of their devices.

Balanced Depictions and Digital-Age Suspense

Simultaneously, Harder hasn’t authored a rant against the vacuousness of online fame. While it is gratifying to watch CW exploit different internet celebrities, and a sense reminiscent of Hitchcock of alignment lets us to hope she doesn’t get caught, Harder is somewhat sympathetic to the major influencer characters. In the first movie, he keyed into the loneliness Madison felt while on supposedly dream getaways. In this film, the director appears confident that merely watching Jacob in action will make it clear that he is selling false masculinity to other doofuses; he resists caricaturing the character. He even gives Jacob a degree of respect by showing his genuine loyalty to his girlfriend; he’s a hypocrite, yet Ariana is a collaborator in his hypocrisy, not a victim by it.

The other side of Harder’s even-keeled presentation is that it can sometimes appear as if he is acknowledging bits of modern online life without deeply exploring them further. This is particularly evident regarding how he introduces artificial intelligence into the plot, an intriguing development that lacks the psychosexual kick it should have. The pluralized title of Influencers could offer devotees of the original expectations of a larger-scale ante-upping, and the movie ultimately delivers that, with an appropriately chaotic climax. However, initially, it resembles more a sleek Alfred Hitchcock movie than a wild-eyed, technology-obsessed De Palma-style shocker. Influencers’ extensive use of actual places might also be what keeps it from coming across like pure nightmare fuel. The world might be saturated with always-online creators, online fraud, and self-serving tourism, but reality itself remains present, at least for now.