The Horror Follow-Up <em>Influencers</em> Is Set to Give Other Streaming Thrillers a Bad Case of FOMO

“The entire situation reeks like a bad made-for-TV,” remarks an opportunistic commentator midway through the chilling follow-up Influencers. At that point, he’s being dismissive in a calculated way toward an interviewee whose bizarre tale he previously said he trusted. But his assessment of what’s happening in the movie isn't inaccurate. Superficially, two streaming movies chronicling a woman who insinuates herself into the worlds of online influencers before killing them seems like the 21st-century equivalent of a lurid yet network-approved weekly TV movie. The wild thing about Influencers is just how superior it is compared to much of the competition, regardless of where you watch it. It’s the kind of suspense film that should give its peers a bad case of FOMO.

Recapping the Original and Setting the Stage

The 2022 film Influencer tracks the enigmatic CW (Cassandra Naud) while she methodically selects traveling alone influencer targets, entices them to their deaths, and covers up those deaths (for a time) by taking control of their socials. The movie concludes (spoiler ahead) with CW stranded on an uninhabited island near the coast of Thailand, after her latest target, Madison (Emily Tennant), reverses their roles on her.

This lends the 2025 Influencers a degree of mystery, as returning writer-director Kurtis David Harder picks up with CW contentedly residing with her girlfriend Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. During a trip to celebrate the couple’s first 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 without any devices to see if they can make it. Is this an origin-story prequel? Did CW become extremist after witnessing the preferential treatment given to one clout-chaser?

Shifting Perspectives and Global Pursuits

The story’s perspective changes multiple times, eventually clarifying those introductory moments' chronological position. The story revisits Madison, who has been cleared of committing CW’s crimes, yet still encounters doubt regarding her version of the events, which includes the killing of her boyfriend. We also follow Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), living in Bali attempting to boost his profile as half of a conservative-influencer duo alongside Ariana (Veronica Long), though his chosen platform is bro-heavy streams, as opposed to the curated images that typically attract CW's interest.

The actor continues to be immensely captivating in her role, which seems particularly tailor-made to her strengths. (She also designed CW's eye-catching wardrobe.) While 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 rival amateur detectives, with both women both use fabricated profiles, social media surveillance, and an apparently unlimited travel budget to chase or evade one another. Of course, maybe the unlimited budget aren't needed. Influencers have a talent for getting to explore posh places without paying much, a skill that CW echoes through her more blatant scamming.

Ingenious Filmmaking and Visual Wanderlust

The creative team for Influencers seem similarly ingenious about finding beautiful places to film, although they were presumably less nefarious about it. The vast majority of the film appears to be filmed in real places, providing it a real-world weight that remains even as many scenes involve a handful of actors of people staring at computer or phone screens.

It’s the same principle that made the James Bond movies look so persistently lavish over the years: Indeed, big action and visual effects can display a big budget, but simply offering a kind of visual tour to viewers also seems inherently cinematic. It’s also especially fitting for a story so dependent on the coexisting superficial glamour and try-hard grind involved in producing envy-inducing online content.

All of the characters in Bali, like those who were in Thailand in the first film, seem to have entry to impossibly chic contemporary villas; there are movies concerning beach rescuers that don’t show off as much aerial pool video. The characters have to convincingly occupy these luxurious, remote places to emphasize the uncomfortable paradox of how often everyone — including the woman wreaking vengeance on the influencers’ narcissistic falseness — nevertheless spends plenty of time in the glow of their devices.

Nuanced Portrayals and Tech-Savvy Tension

Simultaneously, Harder hasn’t authored a rant against the emptiness of online fame. While it can be satisfying to see CW exploit different internet celebrities, and a Hitchcockian sense of identification lets us to wish she evades capture, Harder is relatively understanding of the major influencer characters. In the first movie, he tapped into the loneliness Madison experienced during supposedly envy-worthy vacations. Here, Harder seems to trust that merely watching Jacob at work will reveal that he’s peddling snake-oil masculinity to other doofuses; he avoids turning into a caricature the character. He even gives Jacob a measure of dignity by showing his genuine loyalty to his girlfriend; he’s a hypocrite, but Ariana is a partner in his double standards, not someone exploited by it.

The flip side of Harder’s even-keeled presentation is that it can sometimes appear that he’s nodding at bits of modern online life without investigating them further. This is especially true regarding how he brings AI into the story, an intriguing development that lacks the psychosexual kick it should have. The pluralized title for the film might give fans of the first movie hope for an Aliens-style escalation, and the movie does eventually provide that, with an appropriately wild final act. However, initially, it’s more like a sleek Alfred Hitchcock movie than an wild-eyed, tech-addled De Palma-style shocker. Influencers’ heavy use of actual places might also be what prevents it from coming across like utter horror. Our society may be overrun with content-churning influencers, online fraud, and self-serving tourism, but the world itself is still here, for now.