This Thriller Sequel <em>Influencers</em> Could Give Other Digital Thrillers Serious FOMO

“This whole affair smells like a bad made-for-TV,” observes an opportunistic podcaster midway through the chilling follow-up Influencers. In the moment, he’s being dismissive in a calculated way of a guest with an bizarre tale he previously said he trusted. But his description of what’s happening in the movie isn't inaccurate. On its face, a pair of streaming movies about a woman who insinuates herself into the worlds of online influencers before killing them seems like the 21st-century equivalent of a tawdry yet network-approved weekly TV movie. The wild thing about Influencers is just how superior it proves to be than plenty of the competition, regardless of screen size. It is precisely the thriller capable of giving its peers a serious bout 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 conceals those deaths (at least temporarily) by seizing control of their online accounts. The movie leaves off (spoiler ahead) with CW marooned on an uninhabited island off the coast of Thailand, after her most recent mark, Madison (Emily Tennant), reverses their roles on her.

This lends 2025's Influencers some early mystery, as returning writer-director the director picks up with the character CW happily living with her girlfriend Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. During a trip to celebrate the couple’s first anniversary, UK-based influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) catches CW's attention and anger.

CW remarks to Diane that a person ought to attempt leaving a device-obsessed online personality somewhere without any devices and see whether they can survive. Is this a backstory prequel? Did CW become extremist after witnessing the preferential treatment given to one clout-chaser?

Shifting Perspectives and Global Pursuits

The story’s perspective changes multiple times, eventually clarifying those early scenes’ chronological position. The story revisits Madison, who has been exonerated for carrying out CW's offenses, yet still encounters suspicion over her recounting of the events, including the murder of Madison’s boyfriend. We also follow Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), living in Bali attempting to juice his career as part of a right-wing-influencer power couple alongside Ariana (Veronica Long), although his chosen platform is bro-heavy streams, rather than the curated images that normally attract CW’s attention.

The actor continues to be terrifically magnetic in the part, a role that appears particularly custom-fit to her strengths. (She even created CW's eye-catching outfits.) While the follow-up's focus tips heavily toward CW — the original seemed more balanced between her and Madison — it still functions as a story of dueling amateur detectives, with both women employ fake accounts, social media surveillance, and a seemingly limitless travel fund to chase or evade each other. Then again, maybe the vast resources isn’t necessary. Online personalities possess a talent for gaining access to posh places without paying much, an ability that CW echoes through her more blatant scheming.

Resourceful Production and Cinematic Travelogue

The filmmakers behind Influencers seem similarly ingenious about finding beautiful places to visit, though they were presumably less nefarious in their methods. Most of the movie seems to be shot on location, providing it an authentic gravity that remains even as numerous sequences involve a handful of actors of people looking at digital devices.

It follows the same logic which allowed the Bond franchise appear so persistently lavish for decades: Indeed, big action and special effects can show off a big budget, but simply offering a kind of visual tour for the audience also seems inherently cinematic. This is particularly appropriate for a story so dependent on the coexisting surface-level allure and desperate hustle of creating jealousy-worthy online content.

Every character visiting Bali, like those who were in Thailand in the original, seem to have entry to impossibly chic modern bungalows; there are movies about lifeguards which don't feature as much overhead swimming-pool footage. The characters have to convincingly inhabit these luxurious, remote places to highlight the uneasy irony of how frequently each person — including the woman wreaking vengeance upon the online stars' narcissistic falseness — nonetheless spends plenty of time under the light of their screens.

Balanced Depictions and Digital-Age Suspense

Simultaneously, the director has not crafted a rant targeting the emptiness of online fame. Though it is satisfying to see CW manipulate various online personalities, and a sense reminiscent of Hitchcock of alignment lets us to wish she evades capture, the filmmaker is somewhat understanding of the key influencer figures. In the first movie, he tapped into the loneliness Madison experienced during ostensibly dream getaways. Here, Harder seems to trust that just observing Jacob at work will reveal that he’s peddling false masculinity to other doofuses; he resists turning into a caricature the character. He even gives Jacob a degree of respect by showing his genuine loyalty to his partner; he is two-faced, but Ariana is a collaborator in his double standards, not someone exploited of it.

The other side of Harder’s even-keeled presentation is that it can sometimes appear that he’s nodding at bits of contemporary digital culture without investigating them further. This is especially true regarding how he brings AI into the story, an intriguing development which misses the psychosexual kick it should have. The retitled sequel of Influencers might give fans of the first movie expectations of an Aliens-style escalation, and the film ultimately delivers that, with an appropriately chaotic climax. But before that, it resembles more a polished Hitchcock thriller than a wild-eyed, technology-obsessed De Palma-style shocker. Influencers’ extensive use of real-world locations may also be what keeps it from seeming like pure nightmare fuel. Our society may be overrun with content-churning influencers, online fraud, and exploitative travel, but reality itself remains present, for now.