This Thriller Sequel <em>Influencers</em> Will Give Other Streaming Suspense Films a Bad Case of FOMO

“The entire situation reeks like a bad TV movie,” observes an opportunistic commentator midway through the horror sequel Influencers. In the moment, his tone is dismissive in a calculated way of a guest whose bizarre tale he previously said he trusted. Yet his assessment of what’s happening in the movie isn’t wrong. Superficially, two streaming movies about a young woman who worms her way into the lives of online influencers before killing them feels like the 21st-century equivalent of a tawdry yet network-approved weekly TV movie. The wild thing about Influencers is how much better it proves to be than plenty of its competition, irrespective of where you watch it. It’s the kind of suspense film that should give other movies a serious bout of FOMO.

Recapping the Original and Setting the Stage

The 2022 film Influencer follows the enigmatic CW (Cassandra Naud) as she quietly chooses solo-traveling social media targets, entices them to their deaths, and covers up those deaths (for a time) by taking control of their socials. The movie leaves off (spoiler ahead) with CW stranded on a deserted island off the coast of Thailand, after her most recent mark, Madison (Emily Tennant), reverses their roles on her.

This lends the 2025 Influencers some early ambiguity, as returning filmmaker Kurtis David Harder picks up 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) catches CW’s eye and anger.

CW remarks to her partner that someone should try stranding a phone-addicted online personality in a place with no technology to see whether they can make it. Are we witnessing a backstory prequel? Did CW become extremist by seeing the preferential treatment given to one fame-seeker?

Shifting Perspectives and Global Pursuits

The story’s perspective shifts several more times, ultimately revealing those early scenes’ chronological position. The story revisits Madison, who has been exonerated for committing CW's offenses, yet still encounters doubt over her version of what happened, which includes the murder of Madison’s boyfriend. The film also follows Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), based in Bali and trying to juice his career as half of a right-wing-influencer power couple with Ariana (Veronica Long), although his chosen platform involves masculine-focused livestreams, as opposed to the curated images that normally attract CW's interest.

Naud remains terrifically magnetic in her role, which seems particularly custom-fit for her talents. (She also designed CW's striking wardrobe.) While the sequel’s screentime balance leans heavily into CW — the original felt more equally divided between the two women — it still functions as a story of dueling investigators, with both women both use fake accounts, social media surveillance, and an apparently limitless travel fund to chase or evade each other. Of course, maybe the vast resources aren't needed. Online personalities possess a knack for gaining access to luxurious locales without paying much, an ability which CW mirrors through her more blatant scamming.

Resourceful Production and Visual Wanderlust

The filmmakers behind Influencers appear equally resourceful about finding stunning locations to film, although they were likely less nefarious about it. Most of the movie appears to be shot on location, giving it an authentic gravity that lingers even as many scenes consist of a relatively small cast of people looking at digital devices.

It follows the same logic which allowed the Bond franchise appear so consistently opulent for decades: Indeed, explosive action and visual effects can show off a big budget, however simply offering a travelogue of sorts to viewers also feels deeply filmic. This is particularly appropriate for a story so rooted in the simultaneous surface-level allure and try-hard grind involved in producing jealousy-worthy online content.

Every character in Bali, similar to those staying in Thailand in the first film, appear to enjoy entry to unbelievably stylish modern bungalows; there are movies concerning beach rescuers which don't feature this much overhead swimming-pool video. The characters must believably occupy these lush, remote places to emphasize the uncomfortable paradox of how frequently everyone — including the woman wreaking vengeance on the influencers’ narcissistic falseness — nevertheless devotes much time in the glow of their devices.

Nuanced Portrayals and Tech-Savvy Tension

At the same time, the director has not crafted a rant targeting the emptiness of the influencer industry. Though it can be gratifying to see CW exploit various online personalities, and a Hitchcockian sense of identification lets us to wish she evades capture, the filmmaker is relatively sympathetic to the major influencer characters. In the first movie, he keyed into the isolation Madison experienced during ostensibly dream getaways. Here, the director appears confident that merely watching Jacob in action will make it clear that he’s peddling false masculinity to other gullible men; he resists caricaturing the character. He even grants Jacob a degree of respect through depicting his true devotion to his girlfriend; he’s a hypocrite, yet Ariana is a partner in his hypocrisy, not a victim of it.

The other side of this balanced approach means it can sometimes appear that he is acknowledging elements of modern online life without deeply exploring them further. This is especially true regarding how he brings AI into the plot, a fascinating turn that lacks the psychological edge it should have. The pluralized title for the film could offer fans of the first movie expectations of an Aliens-style escalation, and the film does eventually provide exactly that, with a suitably wild final act. But before that, it resembles more a polished Alfred Hitchcock movie than a wild-eyed, technology-obsessed De Palma-style shocker. Influencers’ heavy use of actual places might also be what prevents it from seeming like pure nightmare fuel. Our society might be saturated with content-churning influencers, online fraud, and self-serving tourism, but reality itself is still here, at least for now.