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

“Everything about this smells like a cheap TV movie,” observes an opportunistic podcaster midway through the chilling follow-up Influencers. At that point, his tone is manipulatively dismissive of a guest whose bizarre tale he previously claimed he believed. Yet his assessment of what’s happening in the movie isn’t wrong. Superficially, a pair of streaming movies about a woman who worms her way into the lives of social media stars before killing them seems like a modern-day version of a tawdry yet cable-ready weekly TV movie. The surprising aspect about Influencers is just how superior it is compared to much of its competition, regardless of screen size. It’s the kind of suspense film capable of giving other movies a serious bout of FOMO.

Revisiting the Original and Establishing the Scene

2022’s Influencer follows the enigmatic CW (Cassandra Naud) as she methodically selects traveling alone influencer targets, entices them to their deaths, and conceals those deaths (for a time) by seizing control of their socials. The film 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 against her.

This lends 2025's Influencers a degree of ambiguity, as returning writer-director Kurtis David Harder picks up with CW happily living alongside her partner Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. On a journey marking their first anniversary, UK-based influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) draws CW's attention and ire.

CW comments to her partner that someone ought to attempt leaving a phone-addicted influencer in a place with no technology and see whether they can make it. Are we witnessing an origin-story prequel? Was CW radicalized after witnessing the special treatment given to a single clout-chaser?

Shifting Perspectives and International Chases

The narrative viewpoint changes multiple times, ultimately revealing those early scenes’ chronological position. The story revisits Madison, now exonerated for carrying out CW's offenses, but still faces suspicion regarding her recounting of the events, which includes the murder of her boyfriend. We also follow Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), based in Bali attempting to juice his career as half of a conservative-influencer duo alongside Ariana (Veronica Long), although his chosen platform involves masculine-focused livestreams, rather than the Instagram photos that typically attract CW’s attention.

The actor continues to be terrifically magnetic in her role, which seems particularly custom-fit to her strengths. (She also designed 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 functions as a story of dueling investigators, with both women employ fake accounts, Insta-stalking, and an apparently unlimited travel budget to chase or evade each other. Then again, perhaps the vast resources isn’t necessary. Influencers have a knack for getting to explore posh places at little cost, a skill that CW echoes through her more blatant scamming.

Resourceful Production and Visual Wanderlust

The creative team for Influencers seem similarly ingenious in locating stunning locations to film, though they were presumably more legitimate about it. The vast majority of the movie seems to be filmed in real places, giving it a real-world weight that remains even as numerous sequences involve a relatively small cast of characters looking at computer or phone screens.

It follows the same logic that made the Bond franchise appear so persistently lavish for decades: Yes, explosive action and special effects can show off large spending, however just providing a kind of visual tour to viewers also seems deeply filmic. It’s also particularly appropriate for a narrative so dependent on the simultaneous superficial glamour and try-hard grind involved in producing jealousy-worthy online content.

All of the characters visiting Bali, similar to those who were in Thailand in the first film, appear to enjoy entry to unbelievably stylish modern bungalows; films exist about lifeguards that don’t show off this much aerial pool footage. The characters have to convincingly occupy these lush, far-flung locations to highlight the uneasy irony of how frequently everyone — including the woman wreaking vengeance on the influencers’ narcissistic falseness — nonetheless spends plenty of time in the glow of their screens.

Nuanced Portrayals and Digital-Age Suspense

At the same time, Harder hasn’t authored a rant against the emptiness of online fame. While it is satisfying to watch CW manipulate different internet celebrities, and a sense reminiscent of Hitchcock of identification lets us to wish she evades capture, Harder is somewhat sympathetic to the key influencer figures. Previously, he tapped into the isolation Madison felt while on supposedly dream getaways. Here, Harder seems to trust that merely watching Jacob in action will make it clear that he is selling snake-oil masculinity to other doofuses; he resists caricaturing the character. He even gives Jacob a degree of respect by showing his true devotion to his girlfriend; he is two-faced, but Ariana is a partner in his double standards, not someone exploited by it.

The flip side of this balanced approach means it may occasionally seem that he’s nodding at bits of modern online life without investigating them. This is especially true regarding how he introduces artificial intelligence into the story, an intriguing development which misses the psychosexual kick it deserves. The retitled sequel for the film might give devotees of the original hope for an Aliens-style escalation, and the movie does eventually provide exactly that, with a suitably wild final act. However, initially, it’s more like a sleek Hitchcock thriller than an frenzied, technology-obsessed Brian De Palma thriller. Influencers’ heavy use of actual places may also be what keeps it from coming across like pure nightmare fuel. Our society might be saturated with always-online creators, digital deception, and exploitative travel, but reality itself is still here, for now.