The Horror Follow-Up <em>Influencers</em> Could Give Competing Digital Thrillers Serious FOMO

“This whole affair reeks like a cheap made-for-TV,” observes a cynical commentator during the horror sequel Influencers. At that point, his tone is manipulatively dismissive of a guest with an bizarre tale he previously claimed he believed. But his description of what’s happening in the movie isn’t wrong. Superficially, a pair of films on demand chronicling a young woman who worms her way into the lives of online influencers before killing them feels like a modern-day version of a lurid yet network-approved weekly TV movie. The wild thing regarding Influencers is how much better it proves to be than plenty of its competition, irrespective of where you watch it. It is precisely the suspense film capable of giving other movies a serious bout of FOMO.

Revisiting the First Film and Setting the Stage

The 2022 film Influencer tracks the enigmatic CW (Cassandra Naud) while she quietly chooses traveling alone social media targets, entices them to their doom, and conceals those deaths (for a time) by taking control of their online accounts. The movie concludes (spoiler ahead) with CW marooned on a deserted island near the coast of Thailand, after her most recent mark, Madison (Emily Tennant), turns the tables against her.

This lends 2025's Influencers some early ambiguity, 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, UK-based influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) catches CW's attention and anger.

CW comments to her partner that someone ought to attempt stranding a phone-addicted influencer in a place with no technology to see whether they can survive. Are we witnessing an origin-story prequel? Was CW radicalized by seeing the special treatment afforded one fame-seeker?

Shifting Perspectives and Global Pursuits

The narrative viewpoint shifts several more times, ultimately revealing those introductory moments' chronological position. Harder catches up with Madison, now cleared of carrying out CW's offenses, yet still encounters doubt over her recounting of the events, which includes the killing of her boyfriend. The film also follows Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), based in Bali and trying to boost his profile as part of a right-wing-influencer duo alongside Ariana (Veronica Long), though his chosen platform is bro-heavy streams, as opposed to the curated images that normally capture CW’s attention.

The actor continues to be immensely captivating in the part, which seems particularly tailor-made to her strengths. (She also designed CW's striking outfits.) While the follow-up's focus leans heavily into CW — the original felt more equally divided between her and Madison — it still works as a story of rival amateur detectives, with both women employ fabricated profiles, Insta-stalking, and an apparently unlimited travel budget to pursue or evade one another. Then again, maybe the unlimited budget aren't needed. Online personalities possess a knack for gaining access to luxurious locales without paying much, an ability that CW echoes with her more overt scheming.

Resourceful Production and Visual Wanderlust

The filmmakers behind Influencers appear equally ingenious about finding stunning locations to visit, although they were likely less nefarious in their methods. Most of the film seems to be filmed in real places, providing it an authentic gravity that lingers even as many scenes involve a relatively small cast of characters staring at computer or phone screens.

It’s the same principle which allowed the Bond franchise appear so persistently lavish over the years: Yes, big action and visual effects can show off large spending, however just providing a kind of visual tour for the audience also feels deeply filmic. It’s also particularly appropriate for a narrative so rooted in the coexisting surface-level allure and desperate hustle of creating envy-inducing digital content.

All of the characters in Bali, like those who were in Thailand in the original, seem to have access to impossibly chic modern bungalows; films exist about lifeguards 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 frequently each person — even the woman exacting revenge on the influencers’ narcissistic falseness — nevertheless spends plenty of time under the light of their screens.

Nuanced Portrayals and Tech-Savvy Tension

Simultaneously, Harder hasn’t authored a screed targeting the emptiness of the influencer industry. Though it is gratifying to see CW manipulate various online personalities, and a sense reminiscent of Hitchcock of identification lets us to wish she evades capture, the filmmaker is somewhat understanding of the major influencer characters. In the first movie, he keyed into the loneliness Madison felt while on supposedly envy-worthy vacations. In this film, Harder seems to trust that merely watching Jacob in action will reveal that he is selling false masculinity to other gullible men; he resists turning into a caricature the character further. He even gives Jacob a degree of respect by showing his genuine loyalty to his girlfriend; he’s a hypocrite, but Ariana is a partner in his hypocrisy, not a victim of it.

The other side of Harder’s even-keeled presentation is that it may occasionally seem that he’s nodding at bits of modern online life without investigating them. This is especially true of the way he introduces artificial intelligence into the story, an intriguing development that lacks the psychological edge it deserves. The pluralized title of Influencers could offer 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 polished Hitchcock thriller than an wild-eyed, tech-addled Brian De Palma thriller. Influencers’ extensive use of real-world locations might also be what keeps it from coming across like utter horror. The world may be overrun with always-online creators, online fraud, and self-serving tourism, but reality itself remains present, for now.