The Thriller Sequel <em>Influencers</em> Is Set to Give Other Streaming Thrillers a Bad Case of FOMO

“The entire situation stinks of a bad made-for-TV,” remarks a cynical podcaster midway through the horror sequel Influencers. In the moment, his tone is manipulatively dismissive of a guest whose bizarre tale he once claimed he believed. But his assessment of the events in the movie isn’t wrong. On its face, a pair of films on demand chronicling a woman who worms her way into the worlds of online influencers and then murders them seems like a modern-day version of a lurid yet cable-ready weekly TV movie. The wild thing about Influencers is just how superior it proves to be compared to much of its competition, regardless of screen size. It is precisely the suspense film that should give other movies a serious bout of FOMO.

Revisiting the First Film and Setting the Stage

The 2022 film Influencer tracks the mysterious CW (Cassandra Naud) while she methodically selects solo-traveling social media targets, entices them to their deaths, and covers up those murders (at least temporarily) by seizing control of their online accounts. The film leaves off (spoiler ahead) with CW marooned on a deserted island near the coast of Thailand, after her most recent mark, Madison (Emily Tennant), reverses their roles against her.

This lends 2025's Influencers a degree of ambiguity, as returning writer-director Kurtis David Harder picks up with CW happily living alongside her partner Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. On a journey marking the couple’s first anniversary, British influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) catches CW's attention and anger.

CW remarks to Diane that someone ought to attempt leaving a device-obsessed influencer in a place without any devices and see whether they can make it. Are we witnessing an origin-story prequel? Was CW radicalized after witnessing the preferential treatment afforded a single clout-chaser?

Shifting Perspectives and International Chases

The narrative viewpoint shifts several more times, eventually clarifying those early scenes’ place in the timeline. The story revisits Madison, now exonerated for carrying out CW’s crimes, but still faces doubt regarding her recounting of what happened, which includes the killing 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 power couple alongside Ariana (Veronica Long), though his chosen platform is bro-heavy streams, rather than the Instagram photos that normally capture CW's interest.

Naud remains immensely captivating in the part, which seems especially custom-fit for her talents. (She also designed CW's eye-catching outfits.) Although the follow-up's screentime balance leans heavily into CW — the first film seemed more balanced between the two women — it still works as a story of dueling investigators, as Madison and CW employ fake accounts, Insta-stalking, and a seemingly limitless travel fund to chase and/or escape one another. Of course, perhaps the unlimited budget aren't needed. Influencers have a knack for getting to explore luxurious locales at little cost, a skill which CW mirrors through her more blatant scamming.

Resourceful Production and Visual Wanderlust

The creative team for Influencers appear equally ingenious in locating stunning locations to film, although they were presumably more legitimate in their methods. Most of the film seems to be shot on location, providing it an authentic gravity that remains even as numerous sequences consist of a relatively small cast of characters looking at computer or phone screens.

It follows the same logic that made the Bond franchise look so persistently lavish over the years: Indeed, explosive action and visual effects can display a big budget, however just providing a travelogue of sorts for the audience also seems deeply filmic. This is especially fitting for a narrative so rooted in the simultaneous surface-level allure and desperate hustle involved in producing jealousy-worthy online content.

Every character visiting Bali, similar to those who were in Thailand in the first film, appear to enjoy access to unbelievably stylish modern bungalows; films exist about lifeguards that don’t show off this much aerial pool footage. These individuals have to convincingly inhabit these lush, remote places to emphasize the uncomfortable paradox of how frequently everyone — even the woman exacting revenge on the influencers’ narcissistic falseness — nevertheless spends plenty of time under the light of their devices.

Balanced Depictions and Tech-Savvy Tension

Simultaneously, the director has not crafted a screed against the emptiness of online fame. Though it can be satisfying to watch CW manipulate different internet celebrities, and a sense reminiscent of Hitchcock of alignment lets us to wish she evades capture, Harder is somewhat understanding of the major influencer characters. In the first movie, he tapped into the loneliness Madison felt during ostensibly envy-worthy vacations. In this film, the director appears confident that merely watching Jacob at work will reveal that he’s peddling snake-oil masculinity to other doofuses; he avoids caricaturing the character. He even gives Jacob a measure of dignity by showing his true devotion to his girlfriend; he’s a hypocrite, but Ariana is a partner in his hypocrisy, not a victim by it.

The other side of this balanced approach is that it may occasionally seem as if he’s nodding at bits of contemporary digital culture without investigating them further. This is particularly evident regarding how he introduces artificial intelligence into the story, an intriguing development which misses the psychological edge it should have. The retitled sequel for the film could offer fans of the first movie expectations of an Aliens-style escalation, and the movie does eventually provide exactly that, with a suitably wild final act. However, initially, it resembles more a polished Hitchcock thriller 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 may be overrun with content-churning influencers, digital deception, and self-serving tourism, but the world itself is still here, for now.