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

“This whole affair reeks like a bad made-for-TV,” observes a cynical podcaster during the chilling follow-up Influencers. In the moment, his tone is manipulatively dismissive toward an interviewee whose bizarre tale he once said he trusted. But his description of what’s happening on screen isn't inaccurate. On its face, two streaming movies about a young woman who worms her way into the lives of online influencers and then murders them seems like a modern-day version of a lurid yet network-approved Movie of the Week. The wild thing regarding Influencers remains how much better it proves to be than plenty of its competition, regardless of screen size. It’s the kind of suspense film capable of giving its peers a serious bout of FOMO.

Revisiting the First Film and Establishing the Scene

The 2022 film Influencer tracks the mysterious CW (Cassandra Naud) as she quietly chooses solo-traveling social media targets, lures them to their doom, and conceals those deaths (at least temporarily) by seizing control of their socials. The film leaves off (spoiler ahead) with CW marooned on an uninhabited island off the coast of Thailand, after her latest target, Madison (Emily Tennant), reverses their roles against her.

This lends 2025's Influencers a degree of mystery, when returning writer-director Kurtis David Harder picks up with the character CW happily living alongside her partner Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. During a trip marking the couple’s first anniversary, UK-based influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) draws CW's attention and ire.

CW remarks to Diane that a person should try stranding a phone-addicted online personality in a place without any devices to 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?

Evolving Viewpoints and Global Pursuits

The story’s perspective changes multiple times, eventually clarifying those early scenes’ chronological position. Harder catches up with Madison, who has been exonerated for carrying out CW’s crimes, but still faces suspicion regarding her version of the events, which includes the murder of her boyfriend. We also follow Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), based in Bali attempting to boost his profile as half of a conservative-influencer duo with Ariana (Veronica Long), though his chosen platform is bro-heavy streams, as opposed to the curated images that normally attract CW's interest.

Naud remains immensely captivating in the part, which seems especially tailor-made for her talents. (She even created CW's striking outfits.) Although the sequel’s screentime balance leans heavily into CW — the first film felt more equally divided between her and Madison — it still works as a tale of dueling investigators, with both women employ fake accounts, social media surveillance, and an apparently unlimited travel budget to chase or evade one another. Then again, perhaps the vast resources aren't needed. Online personalities possess a knack for gaining access to posh places without paying much, an ability that CW echoes through her more blatant scheming.

Resourceful Production and Visual Wanderlust

The filmmakers behind Influencers appear equally resourceful about finding beautiful places to visit, although they were likely more legitimate about it. The vast majority of the movie seems to be shot on location, providing it a real-world weight that lingers even when numerous sequences involve a relatively small cast of people looking at computer or phone screens.

It’s the same principle which allowed the Bond franchise appear so consistently opulent for decades: Yes, explosive action and visual effects can display a big budget, but just providing a travelogue of sorts to viewers also seems deeply filmic. This is especially fitting for a narrative so dependent on the simultaneous superficial glamour and try-hard grind involved in producing jealousy-worthy online content.

Every character visiting Bali, like those who were in Thailand in the first film, appear to enjoy entry to impossibly chic contemporary villas; there are movies about lifeguards which don't feature as much overhead swimming-pool video. These individuals have to convincingly inhabit these luxurious, far-flung locations to emphasize the uneasy irony of how often everyone — even the woman wreaking vengeance on the influencers’ self-centered phoniness — nevertheless devotes much time under the light of their screens.

Balanced Depictions and Tech-Savvy Tension

Simultaneously, the director has not crafted a rant against the vacuousness of online fame. Though it can be satisfying to watch CW manipulate different internet celebrities, and a sense reminiscent of Hitchcock of alignment allows us to wish she doesn’t get caught, Harder is somewhat sympathetic to the key influencer figures. In the first movie, he tapped into the isolation Madison felt while on ostensibly envy-worthy vacations. Here, Harder seems to trust 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 grants Jacob a degree of respect through depicting his true devotion to his partner; he is two-faced, but Ariana is a collaborator in his double standards, not someone exploited of it.

The flip side of this balanced approach means it can sometimes appear that he’s nodding at elements of contemporary digital culture without deeply exploring them. This is particularly evident regarding how he brings AI into the plot, a fascinating turn which misses the psychosexual kick it should have. The retitled sequel of Influencers might give devotees of the original expectations of a larger-scale escalation, and the film does eventually provide exactly that, with a suitably chaotic climax. However, initially, it’s more like a polished Alfred Hitchcock movie than a frenzied, tech-addled Brian De Palma thriller. Influencers’ extensive use of real-world locations might also be what keeps it from seeming like pure nightmare fuel. The world might be saturated with always-online creators, online fraud, and self-serving tourism, but reality itself is still here, at least for now.