This Thriller Sequel <em>Influencers</em> Is Set to Give Competing Digital Suspense Films Serious FOMO

“The entire situation stinks like a cheap made-for-TV,” observes an opportunistic commentator during the horror sequel Influencers. In the moment, his tone is dismissive in a calculated way of a guest whose outlandish story he previously claimed he believed. Yet his assessment of the events on screen isn’t wrong. On its face, two streaming movies chronicling a young woman who insinuates herself into the lives of online influencers and then murders them feels like a modern-day version of a tawdry yet cable-ready Movie of the Week. The surprising aspect about Influencers is how much better it is than plenty of its competition, regardless of screen size. It’s the kind of thriller that should give other movies a bad case of FOMO.

Revisiting the First Film and Setting the Stage

2022’s Influencer tracks the mysterious CW (Cassandra Naud) as she methodically selects solo-traveling influencer targets, lures them to their deaths, and conceals those deaths (for a time) by seizing control of their socials. The film leaves off (spoiler ahead) with CW marooned on an uninhabited island off the coast of Thailand, following her most recent mark, Madison (Emily Tennant), reverses their roles against her.

This provides the 2025 Influencers a degree of mystery, as returning writer-director the director resumes with CW happily living with her girlfriend Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. On a journey to celebrate the couple’s one-year anniversary, UK-based influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) draws CW's attention and anger.

CW comments to her partner that a person ought to attempt leaving a device-obsessed online personality somewhere without any devices and see whether they can survive. Is this an origin-story prequel? Did CW become extremist by seeing the special treatment given to a single clout-chaser?

Evolving Viewpoints and Global Pursuits

The narrative viewpoint changes multiple times, eventually clarifying those early scenes’ chronological position. The story revisits Madison, who has been exonerated for carrying out CW's offenses, yet still encounters doubt regarding her version of what happened, which includes the murder of Madison’s boyfriend. The film also follows Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), based in Bali attempting to juice his career as part of a right-wing-influencer duo with Ariana (Veronica Long), although his preferred medium is bro-heavy streams, rather than the curated images that normally attract CW’s attention.

Naud remains terrifically magnetic in her role, a role that appears particularly tailor-made to her strengths. (She even created CW's eye-catching wardrobe.) Although the follow-up's focus leans heavily into CW — the original seemed more balanced between the two women — it still functions as a story of dueling investigators, with both women employ fake accounts, Insta-stalking, and an apparently unlimited travel budget to pursue and/or escape each other. Then again, perhaps the vast resources aren't needed. Online personalities possess a knack for getting to explore posh places at little cost, an ability that CW echoes with her more overt scamming.

Ingenious Filmmaking and Visual Wanderlust

The creative team for Influencers seem similarly ingenious about finding beautiful places to film, though they were likely more legitimate about it. Most of the film appears to be filmed in real places, providing it a real-world weight that lingers even as numerous sequences involve a relatively small cast of characters staring at digital devices.

It follows the same logic which allowed the James Bond movies look so persistently lavish for decades: Yes, explosive action and visual effects can display large spending, but simply offering a travelogue of sorts to viewers also seems deeply filmic. This is particularly appropriate for a narrative so dependent on the coexisting superficial glamour and try-hard grind of creating jealousy-worthy digital content.

Every character in Bali, like those staying in Thailand in the original, seem to have access to unbelievably stylish contemporary villas; films exist concerning beach rescuers which don't feature this much aerial pool footage. The characters have to convincingly occupy these lush, remote places to emphasize the uncomfortable paradox of how often each person — including the woman exacting revenge upon the online stars' self-centered phoniness — nonetheless spends plenty of time in the glow of their devices.

Nuanced Portrayals and Digital-Age Suspense

Simultaneously, Harder hasn’t authored a screed against the emptiness of the influencer industry. Though it is gratifying to watch CW manipulate different internet celebrities, and a Hitchcockian sense of identification lets us to hope she evades capture, the filmmaker is relatively sympathetic to the key influencer figures. In the first movie, he keyed into the loneliness Madison felt during ostensibly dream getaways. Here, the director appears confident that merely watching Jacob at work will make it clear that he’s peddling snake-oil masculinity to other doofuses; he resists caricaturing the character further. He even gives Jacob a measure of dignity through depicting his genuine loyalty to his partner; he is two-faced, yet Ariana is a partner in his hypocrisy, not someone exploited of it.

The other side of Harder’s even-keeled presentation is that it can sometimes appear as if he is acknowledging elements of contemporary digital culture without deeply exploring them further. This is especially true of the way he introduces artificial intelligence into the story, an intriguing development that lacks the psychosexual kick it deserves. The pluralized title for the film could offer fans of the first movie hope for an Aliens-style escalation, and the movie ultimately delivers exactly that, with an appropriately chaotic climax. But before that, it resembles more a sleek Alfred Hitchcock movie than a wild-eyed, technology-obsessed De Palma-style shocker. Influencers’ heavy use of actual places may also be what prevents it from coming across like utter horror. The world may be overrun with content-churning influencers, online fraud, and exploitative travel, but reality itself remains present, for now.