This Horror Sequel <em>Influencers</em> Could Give Competing Streaming Suspense Films Serious FOMO

“Everything about this smells of a bad made-for-TV,” observes an opportunistic podcaster during the chilling follow-up Influencers. In the moment, he’s being manipulatively dismissive toward an interviewee with an bizarre tale he once claimed he believed. 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 seems like a modern-day version of a lurid yet network-approved weekly TV movie. The wild thing regarding Influencers remains just how superior it is than plenty of its competition, regardless of where you watch it. It is precisely the thriller capable of giving its peers a serious bout of FOMO.

Recapping the Original and Establishing the Scene

2022’s Influencer follows the enigmatic CW (Cassandra Naud) while she methodically selects solo-traveling social media targets, entices them to their doom, and covers up those murders (at least temporarily) by taking control of their socials. The film concludes (spoiler ahead) with CW marooned on an uninhabited island off the coast of Thailand, after her most recent mark, Madison (Emily Tennant), turns the tables on her.

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

CW remarks to her partner that a person ought to attempt stranding a phone-addicted influencer in a place with no technology and see whether they can make it. Is this an origin-story prequel? Was CW radicalized by seeing the special treatment afforded a single clout-chaser?

Shifting Perspectives and International Chases

The narrative viewpoint changes multiple times, ultimately revealing 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, including the killing of her boyfriend. The film also follows Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), living in Bali attempting to boost his profile as part of a right-wing-influencer power couple with Ariana (Veronica Long), although his chosen platform is bro-heavy streams, rather than the curated images that normally capture CW’s attention.

Naud remains terrifically magnetic in her role, a role that appears particularly tailor-made to her strengths. (She also designed CW's striking outfits.) While the sequel’s screentime balance tips heavily toward CW — the original felt more equally divided between her and Madison — it still functions as a tale of rival investigators, as Madison and CW employ fake accounts, Insta-stalking, and an apparently limitless travel fund to pursue or evade one another. Of course, maybe the vast resources isn’t necessary. Influencers have a knack for gaining access to posh places at little cost, a skill that CW echoes through her more blatant scheming.

Resourceful Production and Visual Wanderlust

The creative team for Influencers seem similarly ingenious about finding stunning locations to visit, although they were presumably more legitimate in their methods. The vast majority of the movie seems to be shot on location, giving it a real-world weight that remains even when many scenes involve a handful of actors of people looking at digital devices.

It’s the same principle that made the James Bond movies look so persistently lavish for decades: Indeed, big action and special effects can show off large spending, but just providing a kind of visual tour to viewers also feels inherently cinematic. This is especially fitting for a narrative so rooted in the simultaneous superficial glamour and desperate hustle of creating envy-inducing online content.

Every character in Bali, similar to those staying in Thailand in the original, seem to have entry to impossibly chic contemporary villas; there are movies about lifeguards that don’t show off this much aerial pool video. The characters must believably inhabit these lush, far-flung locations to highlight the uncomfortable paradox of how often each person — even the woman exacting revenge upon the online stars' self-centered phoniness — nevertheless devotes much time in the glow of their screens.

Balanced Depictions and Digital-Age Suspense

Simultaneously, the director has not crafted a screed targeting the vacuousness of the influencer industry. While it is satisfying to see CW exploit various online personalities, and a Hitchcockian sense of alignment lets us to hope she doesn’t get caught, Harder is relatively understanding of the major influencer characters. In the first movie, he tapped into the isolation Madison experienced during ostensibly envy-worthy vacations. In this film, the director appears confident that merely watching Jacob at work will reveal that he is selling snake-oil masculinity to other gullible men; he avoids caricaturing the character. He even grants Jacob a measure of dignity by showing his true devotion to his partner; he’s a hypocrite, yet Ariana is a partner in his hypocrisy, not a victim of it.

The other side of this balanced approach is that it may occasionally seem as if he is acknowledging elements of modern online life without investigating them further. This is especially true regarding how he brings AI into the plot, a fascinating turn which misses the psychological edge it should have. The retitled sequel of Influencers could offer devotees of the original expectations of a larger-scale escalation, and the movie does eventually provide exactly that, with an appropriately chaotic climax. However, initially, it’s more like a sleek Alfred Hitchcock movie than a frenzied, technology-obsessed De Palma-style shocker. Influencers’ heavy use of real-world locations might also be what prevents it from seeming like pure nightmare fuel. Our society may be overrun with always-online creators, online fraud, and exploitative travel, but reality itself is still here, for now.