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

“This whole affair stinks like a cheap made-for-TV,” observes a cynical commentator during the horror sequel Influencers. At that point, his tone is dismissive in a calculated way of a guest with an bizarre tale he previously said he trusted. Yet his description of the events in the movie isn’t wrong. Superficially, a pair of streaming movies about a woman who worms her way into the worlds of online influencers before killing them feels like the 21st-century equivalent of a tawdry yet network-approved Movie of the Week. The surprising aspect about Influencers is just how superior it proves to be compared to much of the competition, irrespective of where you watch it. It is precisely the thriller capable of giving other movies a bad case of FOMO.

Recapping the Original and Setting the Stage

The 2022 film Influencer tracks the mysterious CW (Cassandra Naud) while she quietly chooses traveling alone social media targets, entices them to their deaths, and conceals those deaths (for a time) by seizing control of their socials. The movie leaves off (spoiler ahead) with CW stranded on an uninhabited island off the coast of Thailand, following her latest target, Madison (Emily Tennant), reverses their roles on her.

This lends the 2025 Influencers a degree of ambiguity, as returning writer-director Kurtis David Harder resumes with the character CW contentedly residing alongside her partner Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. On a journey marking the couple’s first anniversary, British influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) catches CW’s eye and anger.

CW comments to her partner that someone ought to attempt leaving a phone-addicted online personality in a place with no technology to see whether they can survive. Are we witnessing a backstory prequel? Was CW radicalized by seeing the preferential treatment given to a single fame-seeker?

Evolving Viewpoints and Global Pursuits

The narrative viewpoint shifts several more times, eventually clarifying those early scenes’ place in the timeline. The story revisits Madison, who has been cleared of committing CW’s crimes, yet still encounters doubt over her recounting of what happened, including 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 conservative-influencer duo alongside Ariana (Veronica Long), though his chosen platform is bro-heavy streams, as opposed to the Instagram photos that typically capture CW's interest.

The actor continues to be immensely captivating in the part, a role that appears especially tailor-made for her talents. (She even created CW's striking wardrobe.) While the follow-up's screentime balance tips heavily toward CW — the original felt more equally divided between the two women — it still works as a story of rival investigators, with both women both use fake accounts, Insta-stalking, and an apparently limitless travel fund to pursue or evade one another. Of course, maybe the unlimited budget isn’t necessary. Influencers have a talent for getting to explore luxurious locales at little cost, an ability which CW mirrors through her more blatant scamming.

Resourceful Production and Cinematic Travelogue

The filmmakers behind Influencers seem similarly resourceful in locating beautiful places to visit, although they were likely more legitimate in their methods. Most of the film seems to be filmed in real places, giving it a real-world weight that remains even when numerous sequences involve a handful of actors of people looking at digital devices.

It follows the same logic that made the Bond franchise look so consistently opulent for decades: Indeed, explosive action and visual effects can show off large spending, but simply offering a travelogue of sorts to viewers also seems deeply filmic. It’s also especially fitting for a story so rooted in the coexisting surface-level allure and desperate hustle involved in producing envy-inducing online content.

Every character visiting Bali, similar to those who were in Thailand in the first film, appear to enjoy entry to unbelievably stylish modern bungalows; there are movies about lifeguards that don’t show off this much aerial pool video. The characters must believably occupy these luxurious, far-flung locations to emphasize the uneasy irony of how often everyone — even the woman wreaking vengeance upon the online stars' narcissistic falseness — nevertheless spends plenty of time in the glow of their devices.

Balanced Depictions and Tech-Savvy Tension

Simultaneously, the director has not crafted a rant against the emptiness of online fame. While it can be gratifying to watch CW exploit different internet celebrities, and a sense reminiscent of Hitchcock of identification lets us to wish she doesn’t get caught, the filmmaker is relatively sympathetic to the major influencer characters. In the first movie, he keyed into the loneliness Madison felt during supposedly dream getaways. In this film, the director appears confident that just observing Jacob in action will reveal that he’s peddling snake-oil masculinity to other doofuses; he avoids caricaturing the character. He even gives Jacob a measure of dignity by showing his true devotion to his partner; he is two-faced, yet Ariana is a collaborator in his hypocrisy, not someone exploited of it.

The flip side of this balanced approach means it may occasionally seem as if he is acknowledging elements of contemporary digital culture without investigating them further. This is particularly evident regarding how he brings AI into the story, a fascinating turn which misses the psychosexual kick it deserves. The retitled sequel for the film might give devotees of the original hope for a larger-scale escalation, and the movie ultimately delivers that, with a suitably wild final act. But before that, it’s more like a sleek Alfred Hitchcock movie than an frenzied, tech-addled Brian De Palma thriller. Influencers’ extensive use of actual places may also be what keeps it from seeming like utter horror. The world may be overrun with content-churning influencers, online fraud, and exploitative travel, but reality itself remains present, at least for now.