This Horror Sequel <em>Influencers</em> Is Set to Give Competing Digital Suspense Films a Bad Case of FOMO

“This whole affair stinks of a bad made-for-TV,” remarks a cynical podcaster during the chilling follow-up Influencers. In the moment, he’s being dismissive in a calculated way toward an interviewee with an outlandish story he once said he trusted. But his description of the events on screen isn't inaccurate. On its face, a pair of films on demand chronicling a woman who worms her way into the lives of online influencers and then murders them seems like a modern-day version of a tawdry but cable-ready Movie of the Week. The wild thing regarding Influencers remains how much better it is compared to much of the competition, regardless of screen size. It’s the kind of suspense film that should give its peers a bad case of FOMO.

Recapping the First Film and Setting the Stage

The 2022 film Influencer tracks the mysterious CW (Cassandra Naud) while she quietly chooses traveling alone social media targets, lures them to their deaths, and covers up those murders (at least temporarily) by taking control of their socials. The movie concludes (spoiler ahead) with CW stranded on a deserted island off the coast of Thailand, following her most recent mark, Madison (Emily Tennant), reverses their roles against her.

This provides the 2025 Influencers some early ambiguity, as returning filmmaker the director picks up with the character CW contentedly residing alongside her partner Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. During a trip to celebrate the couple’s one-year anniversary, UK-based influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) catches CW’s eye and anger.

CW remarks to her partner that a person should try stranding a device-obsessed influencer somewhere without any devices to see whether they can make it. Are we witnessing a backstory prequel? Did CW become extremist after witnessing the preferential treatment afforded one fame-seeker?

Evolving Viewpoints and Global Pursuits

The narrative viewpoint shifts several more times, eventually clarifying those early scenes’ chronological position. Harder catches up with Madison, who has been exonerated for committing CW's offenses, but still faces doubt regarding her version of what happened, including the killing of Madison’s boyfriend. We also follow Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), based in Bali and trying to juice his career as part of a right-wing-influencer power couple alongside Ariana (Veronica Long), though his chosen platform involves masculine-focused livestreams, rather than the curated images that typically capture CW’s attention.

The actor continues to be immensely captivating in her role, a role that appears especially tailor-made to her strengths. (She also designed CW's striking outfits.) While the follow-up's screentime balance tips heavily toward CW — the original seemed more balanced between the two women — it still functions as a tale of dueling investigators, as Madison and CW employ fake accounts, social media surveillance, and an apparently unlimited travel budget to pursue and/or escape one another. Then again, maybe the unlimited budget aren't needed. Influencers have a talent for gaining access to posh places without paying much, a skill which CW mirrors with her more overt scheming.

Ingenious Filmmaking and Cinematic Travelogue

The filmmakers behind Influencers appear equally ingenious in locating beautiful places to film, though they were presumably more legitimate about it. The vast majority of the film seems to be shot on location, providing it a real-world weight that remains even when numerous sequences consist of a relatively small cast of people staring at digital devices.

It’s the same principle that made the Bond franchise appear so consistently opulent for decades: Indeed, explosive action and special effects can display a big budget, however just providing a kind of visual tour for the audience also seems deeply filmic. It’s also particularly appropriate for a narrative so rooted in the coexisting superficial glamour and desperate hustle involved in producing envy-inducing digital content.

Every character in Bali, like those staying in Thailand in the first film, seem to have entry to unbelievably stylish modern bungalows; there are movies about lifeguards that don’t show off this much overhead swimming-pool video. The characters have to convincingly inhabit these luxurious, remote places to highlight the uneasy irony of how frequently each person — even the woman exacting revenge on the influencers’ narcissistic falseness — nevertheless spends plenty of time in the glow of their devices.

Balanced Depictions and Tech-Savvy Tension

At the same time, Harder hasn’t authored a rant against the vacuousness of the influencer industry. Though it can be satisfying to watch CW manipulate various online personalities, and a Hitchcockian sense of identification allows us to wish she doesn’t get caught, Harder is somewhat sympathetic to the major influencer characters. In the first movie, he keyed into the loneliness Madison felt during supposedly envy-worthy vacations. In this film, the director appears confident that just observing Jacob at work will make it clear that he is selling snake-oil masculinity to other gullible men; he resists caricaturing the character. He even gives Jacob a measure of dignity by showing his genuine loyalty to his girlfriend; he’s a hypocrite, yet Ariana is a collaborator in his hypocrisy, not a victim by it.

The flip side of Harder’s even-keeled presentation means it can sometimes appear that he’s nodding at elements of contemporary digital culture without investigating them further. This is especially true of the way he introduces artificial intelligence into the plot, an intriguing development which misses the psychological edge it should have. The pluralized title for the film might give fans of the first movie hope for a larger-scale escalation, and the film does eventually provide exactly that, with a suitably wild final act. But before that, it resembles more a sleek Hitchcock thriller than an frenzied, technology-obsessed De Palma-style shocker. Influencers’ heavy use of real-world locations may also be what prevents it from coming across like pure nightmare fuel. The world might be saturated with content-churning influencers, digital deception, and exploitative travel, but reality itself is still here, for now.