This Thriller Sequel <em>Influencers</em> Will Give Other Streaming Suspense Films Serious FOMO

“This whole affair reeks of a cheap TV movie,” states an opportunistic podcaster during the horror sequel Influencers. In the moment, his tone is manipulatively dismissive of a guest with an bizarre tale he once said he trusted. But his assessment of the events in the movie isn’t wrong. Superficially, two streaming movies about a young woman who insinuates herself into the lives of online influencers and then murders them feels like the 21st-century equivalent of a lurid but network-approved weekly TV movie. The surprising aspect about Influencers is how much better it proves to be compared to much of its competition, regardless of where you watch it. It is precisely the thriller capable of giving other movies a serious bout of FOMO.

Revisiting the Original and Establishing the Scene

2022’s Influencer follows the enigmatic CW (Cassandra Naud) while she quietly chooses solo-traveling social media targets, entices them to their doom, and conceals those deaths (for a time) by seizing control of their online accounts. The film concludes (spoiler ahead) with CW stranded on a deserted island off the coast of Thailand, following her most recent mark, Madison (Emily Tennant), turns the tables against her.

This lends the 2025 Influencers a degree of ambiguity, when returning writer-director the director resumes with CW contentedly residing alongside her partner Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. On a journey to celebrate the couple’s one-year anniversary, British influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) draws CW’s eye and ire.

CW remarks to Diane that a person ought to attempt stranding a phone-addicted influencer in a place without any devices to see whether they can make it. Are we witnessing a backstory prequel? Was CW radicalized after witnessing the special treatment afforded one fame-seeker?

Evolving Viewpoints and Global Pursuits

The narrative viewpoint changes multiple times, eventually clarifying those introductory moments' chronological position. The story revisits Madison, now cleared of committing CW’s crimes, but still faces suspicion regarding her recounting of the events, which includes the murder of her boyfriend. We also follow Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), based in Bali attempting to juice his career as part of a conservative-influencer duo alongside Ariana (Veronica Long), although his chosen platform involves masculine-focused livestreams, rather than the curated images that typically capture CW’s attention.

The actor continues to be immensely captivating in the part, which seems especially custom-fit to her strengths. (She even created CW's eye-catching outfits.) While the sequel’s screentime balance tips heavily toward CW — the first film seemed more balanced between her and Madison — it still works as a story of dueling amateur detectives, with both women both use fake accounts, Insta-stalking, and a seemingly limitless travel fund to chase and/or escape one another. Of course, maybe the unlimited budget aren't needed. Online personalities possess a talent for gaining access to luxurious locales without paying much, an ability that CW echoes through her more blatant scheming.

Ingenious Filmmaking and Visual Wanderlust

The creative team for Influencers seem similarly ingenious in locating beautiful places to visit, though they were presumably less nefarious about it. Most of the movie appears to be shot on location, providing it an authentic gravity that lingers even when numerous sequences involve a relatively small cast of characters staring at computer or phone screens.

It’s the same principle that made the James Bond movies appear so consistently opulent for decades: Indeed, explosive action and visual effects can display a big budget, but simply offering a travelogue of sorts for the audience also seems deeply filmic. It’s also particularly appropriate for a story so rooted in the coexisting surface-level allure and try-hard grind involved in producing envy-inducing digital content.

All of the characters in Bali, similar to those staying in Thailand in the original, appear to enjoy access to unbelievably stylish modern bungalows; films exist concerning beach rescuers that don’t show off as much aerial pool video. The characters must believably occupy these lush, far-flung locations to highlight the uncomfortable paradox of how frequently everyone — even the woman exacting revenge on the influencers’ self-centered phoniness — nonetheless devotes much time in the glow of their screens.

Balanced Depictions and Tech-Savvy Tension

Simultaneously, Harder hasn’t authored a screed against the vacuousness of the influencer industry. Though it is satisfying to see CW exploit various online personalities, and a sense reminiscent of Hitchcock of identification lets us to hope she doesn’t get caught, the filmmaker is relatively sympathetic to the key influencer figures. In the first movie, he keyed into the loneliness Madison experienced while on supposedly dream getaways. In this film, Harder seems to trust that just observing Jacob at work will reveal that he’s peddling false masculinity to other gullible men; he resists turning into a caricature the character. He even grants Jacob a degree of respect by showing his genuine loyalty to his girlfriend; he is two-faced, yet Ariana is a partner in his hypocrisy, not someone exploited by it.

The other side of Harder’s even-keeled presentation means it may occasionally seem that he’s nodding at elements of contemporary digital culture without investigating them further. This is particularly evident of the way he introduces artificial intelligence into the story, an intriguing development which misses the psychosexual kick it deserves. The pluralized title of Influencers could offer devotees of the original hope for an Aliens-style escalation, and the film does eventually provide that, with an appropriately wild final act. But before that, it resembles more a sleek Alfred Hitchcock movie than an frenzied, tech-addled De Palma-style shocker. Influencers’ heavy use of real-world locations may also be what keeps it from seeming like pure nightmare fuel. Our society might be saturated with always-online creators, online fraud, and exploitative travel, but the world itself is still here, at least for now.