The Thriller Follow-Up <em>Influencers</em> Could Give Other Digital Suspense Films a Bad Case of FOMO

“The entire situation reeks like a cheap made-for-TV,” states a cynical podcaster during the chilling follow-up Influencers. In the moment, he’s being dismissive in a calculated way toward an interviewee whose bizarre tale he once said he trusted. But his description of the events in the movie isn’t wrong. Superficially, a pair of streaming movies chronicling a young woman who insinuates herself into the worlds of social media stars and then murders them seems like the 21st-century equivalent of a lurid but network-approved weekly TV movie. The wild thing regarding Influencers is just how superior it is than plenty of its competition, regardless of screen size. It’s the kind of thriller capable of giving other movies a serious bout of FOMO.

Revisiting the First Film and Setting the Stage

The 2022 film Influencer follows the mysterious CW (Cassandra Naud) while she methodically selects solo-traveling influencer targets, entices them to their doom, and conceals those murders (for a time) by taking control of their socials. The movie concludes (spoiler ahead) with CW marooned on an uninhabited island near the coast of Thailand, after her most recent mark, Madison (Emily Tennant), turns the tables against her.

This provides 2025's Influencers a degree of ambiguity, as returning filmmaker Kurtis David Harder picks up with CW contentedly residing alongside her partner Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. During a trip to celebrate the couple’s first anniversary, British influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) catches CW's attention and ire.

CW remarks to her partner that a person should try leaving a device-obsessed influencer somewhere with no technology and see if they can make it. Is this an origin-story prequel? Did CW become extremist after witnessing the special treatment afforded one fame-seeker?

Shifting Perspectives and International Chases

The narrative viewpoint changes multiple times, eventually clarifying those introductory moments' chronological position. Harder catches up with Madison, who has been exonerated for carrying out CW's offenses, but still faces doubt regarding her recounting of what happened, including the killing of Madison’s boyfriend. The film also follows Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), living in Bali and trying to boost his profile as half of a right-wing-influencer duo alongside Ariana (Veronica Long), though his preferred medium is bro-heavy streams, as opposed to the curated images that typically attract CW’s attention.

The actor continues to be terrifically magnetic in the part, which seems especially custom-fit to her strengths. (She even created CW's eye-catching wardrobe.) While 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 rival amateur detectives, with both women employ fake accounts, social media surveillance, and an apparently unlimited travel budget to chase or evade one another. Of course, maybe the vast resources aren't needed. Online personalities possess a talent for gaining access to posh places without paying much, a skill which CW mirrors with her more overt scheming.

Resourceful Production and Visual Wanderlust

The creative team for Influencers appear equally ingenious in locating beautiful places to visit, though they were likely more legitimate about it. Most of the film appears to be filmed in real places, giving it an authentic gravity that remains even when 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 appear so persistently lavish over the years: Indeed, big action and visual effects can show off a big budget, however simply offering a kind of visual tour for the audience also feels inherently cinematic. This is particularly appropriate for a story so dependent on the coexisting surface-level allure and desperate hustle involved in producing jealousy-worthy digital content.

All of the characters visiting Bali, like those who were in Thailand in the original, appear to enjoy access to unbelievably stylish contemporary villas; there are movies concerning beach rescuers which don't feature this much aerial pool footage. The characters must believably occupy these luxurious, far-flung locations to highlight the uncomfortable paradox of how often each person — even the woman wreaking vengeance upon the online stars' narcissistic falseness — nevertheless spends plenty of time under the light of their screens.

Nuanced Portrayals and Digital-Age Suspense

At the same time, the director has not crafted a screed targeting the emptiness of online fame. Though it is gratifying to watch CW exploit different internet celebrities, and a sense reminiscent of Hitchcock of alignment allows us to wish she doesn’t get caught, Harder is relatively understanding of the key influencer figures. In the first movie, he tapped into the isolation Madison experienced during ostensibly dream getaways. In this film, the director appears confident that merely watching Jacob at work will make it clear that he is selling false masculinity to other gullible men; he avoids caricaturing the character further. He even grants Jacob a measure of dignity by showing his genuine loyalty to his partner; he is two-faced, but Ariana is a partner in his hypocrisy, not someone exploited by it.

The flip side of Harder’s even-keeled presentation is that it may occasionally seem that he’s nodding at bits of contemporary digital culture without investigating them. This is especially true of the way he introduces artificial intelligence into the plot, a fascinating turn that lacks the psychological edge it deserves. The pluralized title for the film could offer fans of the first movie hope for an Aliens-style ante-upping, and the movie ultimately delivers exactly that, with a suitably wild final act. But before that, it resembles more a sleek Alfred Hitchcock movie than an wild-eyed, technology-obsessed De Palma-style shocker. Influencers’ heavy use of real-world locations may also be what prevents it from coming across like utter horror. Our society may be overrun with always-online creators, digital deception, and exploitative travel, but reality itself remains present, for now.