The Thriller Sequel <em>Influencers</em> Will Give Competing Streaming Thrillers a Bad Case of FOMO

“The entire situation smells of a cheap made-for-TV,” states an opportunistic podcaster during the chilling follow-up Influencers. In the moment, his tone is dismissive in a calculated way of a guest with an outlandish story he once claimed he believed. Yet his assessment of the events in the movie isn’t wrong. On its face, two streaming movies chronicling a woman who insinuates herself into the worlds of online influencers and then murders them feels like the 21st-century equivalent of a tawdry yet network-approved Movie of the Week. The surprising aspect regarding Influencers remains how much better it is than plenty of the competition, irrespective of where you watch it. It’s the kind of thriller capable of giving its peers a bad case of FOMO.

Revisiting the Original and Setting the Stage

2022’s Influencer tracks the mysterious CW (Cassandra Naud) as she quietly chooses solo-traveling social media targets, entices them to their deaths, and conceals those deaths (for a time) by seizing control of their online accounts. The movie leaves off (spoiler ahead) with CW marooned on a deserted island near the coast of Thailand, following her most recent mark, Madison (Emily Tennant), reverses their roles against her.

This lends the 2025 Influencers a degree of ambiguity, as returning filmmaker the director picks up with CW happily living with her girlfriend Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. During a trip marking the couple’s one-year anniversary, British influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) draws CW's attention and ire.

CW comments to her partner that someone should try stranding a phone-addicted online personality somewhere without any devices and see if they can make it. Are we witnessing a backstory prequel? Was CW radicalized after witnessing the preferential treatment given to one fame-seeker?

Shifting Perspectives and International Chases

The story’s perspective changes multiple times, ultimately revealing those early scenes’ place in the timeline. The story revisits Madison, who has been cleared of carrying out CW’s crimes, yet still encounters doubt over her recounting of what happened, which includes the murder of Madison’s boyfriend. We also follow Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), based in Bali attempting to boost his profile as half of a right-wing-influencer duo alongside Ariana (Veronica Long), although his chosen platform involves masculine-focused livestreams, as opposed to the curated images that normally attract CW’s attention.

Naud remains immensely captivating in the part, which seems particularly tailor-made to her strengths. (She even created CW's eye-catching outfits.) Although the sequel’s focus leans heavily into CW — the first film seemed more balanced between the two women — it still works as a tale of dueling amateur detectives, with both women both use fabricated profiles, social media surveillance, and a seemingly limitless travel fund to pursue or evade one another. Of course, maybe the vast resources isn’t necessary. Online personalities possess a talent for gaining access to posh places at little cost, an ability that CW echoes with her more overt scamming.

Ingenious Filmmaking and Cinematic Travelogue

The filmmakers behind Influencers appear equally ingenious in locating beautiful places to visit, although they were presumably less nefarious about it. Most of the movie appears to be shot on location, providing it a real-world weight that lingers even when many scenes consist of a handful of actors of people staring at digital devices.

It follows the same logic which allowed the James Bond movies appear so persistently lavish for decades: Indeed, big action and visual effects can display large spending, however simply offering a kind of visual tour for the audience also feels deeply filmic. This is particularly appropriate for a narrative so rooted in the simultaneous surface-level allure and try-hard grind of creating envy-inducing online content.

All of the characters in Bali, like those staying in Thailand in the original, seem to have entry to impossibly chic modern bungalows; there are movies concerning beach rescuers that don’t show off as much aerial pool video. These individuals have to convincingly occupy these luxurious, remote places to emphasize the uncomfortable paradox of how frequently each person — including the woman wreaking vengeance on the influencers’ self-centered phoniness — nonetheless devotes much time under the light of their screens.

Nuanced Portrayals and Tech-Savvy Tension

Simultaneously, the director has not crafted a screed against the vacuousness of online fame. While it is satisfying to watch CW manipulate various online personalities, and a Hitchcockian sense of identification lets us to hope she doesn’t get caught, Harder is relatively understanding of the major influencer characters. In the first movie, he tapped into the loneliness Madison felt while on ostensibly envy-worthy vacations. Here, the director appears confident that merely watching Jacob in action will reveal that he is selling false masculinity to other gullible men; he avoids 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 hypocrisy, not someone exploited by it.

The flip side of this balanced approach means it may occasionally seem as if he’s nodding at bits of modern online life without investigating them further. This is especially true regarding how he introduces artificial intelligence into the story, a fascinating turn which misses the psychosexual kick it should have. The retitled sequel of Influencers could offer devotees of the original hope for an Aliens-style ante-upping, and the movie ultimately delivers that, with an appropriately wild final act. However, initially, it’s more like a polished Alfred Hitchcock movie than a wild-eyed, tech-addled De Palma-style shocker. Influencers’ extensive use of real-world locations might also be what keeps it from seeming like utter horror. The world may be overrun with always-online creators, online fraud, and exploitative travel, but the world itself is still here, at least for now.