The Thriller Follow-Up <em>Influencers</em> Will Give Competing Digital Thrillers Serious FOMO

“This whole affair reeks of a cheap made-for-TV,” remarks a cynical podcaster midway through the horror sequel Influencers. At that point, his tone is dismissive in a calculated way of a guest whose bizarre tale he previously claimed he believed. But his description of what’s happening on screen isn’t wrong. On its face, a pair of streaming movies about a young woman who insinuates herself into the worlds of social media stars and then murders them feels like a modern-day version of a tawdry but network-approved Movie of the Week. The surprising aspect about Influencers remains how much better it is compared to much of the competition, regardless of screen size. It’s the kind of thriller that should give other movies a bad case of FOMO.

Recapping the Original and Establishing the Scene

2022’s Influencer follows the mysterious CW (Cassandra Naud) as she methodically selects solo-traveling social media targets, lures them to their doom, and conceals those murders (at least temporarily) by taking control of their socials. The movie concludes (spoiler ahead) with CW marooned on a deserted island off the coast of Thailand, following her most recent mark, Madison (Emily Tennant), reverses their roles on her.

This provides the 2025 Influencers some early mystery, as returning filmmaker the director picks up with the character CW happily living alongside her partner Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. On a journey to celebrate their one-year anniversary, British influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) catches CW's attention and anger.

CW remarks to Diane that someone ought to attempt leaving a device-obsessed online personality in a place without any devices to see if they can survive. Are we witnessing an origin-story prequel? Was CW radicalized after witnessing the preferential treatment afforded a single clout-chaser?

Evolving Viewpoints and Global Pursuits

The narrative viewpoint shifts several more times, ultimately revealing those early scenes’ chronological position. Harder catches up with Madison, who has been exonerated for carrying out CW's offenses, but still faces suspicion over her recounting of the events, including the killing of Madison’s boyfriend. We also follow Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), living in Bali attempting to juice his career as part of a conservative-influencer duo with Ariana (Veronica Long), though his preferred medium is bro-heavy streams, rather than the Instagram photos that typically capture CW’s attention.

Naud remains terrifically magnetic in the part, which seems especially tailor-made to her strengths. (She even created CW's striking outfits.) While the follow-up's focus leans heavily into CW — the first film seemed more balanced between her and Madison — it still functions as a story of dueling investigators, as Madison and CW both use fabricated profiles, Insta-stalking, and an apparently limitless travel fund to pursue and/or escape one another. Then again, maybe the vast resources aren't needed. Online personalities possess a talent for getting to explore posh places without paying much, an ability which CW mirrors through her more blatant scheming.

Ingenious Filmmaking and Visual Wanderlust

The filmmakers behind Influencers seem similarly resourceful in locating beautiful places to visit, although they were presumably more legitimate in their methods. The vast majority of the film appears to be filmed in real places, giving it an authentic gravity that remains even when numerous sequences consist of a handful of actors of characters looking at computer or phone screens.

It follows the same logic which allowed the Bond franchise appear so consistently opulent for decades: Indeed, explosive action and special effects can show off a big budget, however just providing a kind of visual tour for the audience also seems inherently cinematic. It’s also especially fitting for a story so rooted in the simultaneous superficial glamour and desperate hustle involved in producing envy-inducing digital content.

Every character in Bali, similar to those who were in Thailand in the first film, seem to have access to unbelievably stylish modern bungalows; films exist about lifeguards which don't feature this much overhead swimming-pool video. These individuals must believably occupy these lush, far-flung locations to highlight the uncomfortable paradox of how often everyone — even the woman wreaking vengeance upon the online stars' self-centered phoniness — nevertheless devotes much time under the light of their devices.

Balanced Depictions and Digital-Age Suspense

At the same time, the director has not crafted a rant targeting the vacuousness of the influencer industry. Though it is gratifying to watch CW exploit various online personalities, and a Hitchcockian sense of identification lets us to hope she evades capture, Harder is relatively sympathetic to the key influencer figures. Previously, he tapped into the loneliness Madison experienced during supposedly dream getaways. Here, the director appears confident that merely watching Jacob in action will reveal that he’s peddling false masculinity to other doofuses; he resists caricaturing the character. He even grants Jacob a measure of dignity by showing his true devotion to his girlfriend; he’s a hypocrite, but Ariana is a partner in his double standards, not a victim of it.

The other side of Harder’s even-keeled presentation is that it may occasionally seem that he is acknowledging bits of contemporary digital culture without investigating them further. This is especially true regarding how he brings AI into the plot, an intriguing development that lacks the psychological edge it deserves. The retitled sequel for the film could offer fans of the first movie expectations of a larger-scale ante-upping, and the film does eventually provide exactly that, with an appropriately chaotic climax. However, initially, it resembles more a polished Alfred Hitchcock movie than a frenzied, technology-obsessed Brian De Palma thriller. Influencers’ heavy use of actual places may also be what keeps it from coming across like utter horror. The world might be saturated with always-online creators, digital deception, and self-serving tourism, but reality itself remains present, for now.