With a clever premise and a taste for violence, Parker Finn's feature debut, Smile, has earned many fans since its release in 2022. Now, the highly anticipated sequel, Smile 2, takes the previously established creepy grin curse from the first film — which passes from person to person after someone witnesses a horrific death — and adds the elements of fame and the entertainment industry to the mix. What would happen if a pop star was haunted by a malevolent spirit in front of countless cameras?
Bringing in elements from movies like It Follows and The Ring, the original Smile centered on a psychiatric doctor named Rose (Sosie Bacon), who witnessed the gruesome, self-inflicted death of one of her patients. Soon after, Rose began to lose track of reality as increasingly strange things happened around her, including the recurrence of the chilling smile that's this franchise's namesake. The movie's finale was tantalizingly open-ended, leaving the door ajar for even more mayhem.
Picking up just days after the original left off, the movie's latest victim is former good cop Joel (Kyle Gallner), who remains haunted by the immolation death of his girlfriend Rose. Joel tries to pass the smile curse to another unlucky recipient, but he soon dies a terrible death anyway, passing this paranormal plague to a drug dealer named Lewis (Lukas Gage). Lewis in turn passes it to pop star Skye Riley (Naomi Scott), who is still reeling from a devastating car crash that injured her and killed her boyfriend. As in the first film, Skye begins to see and hear things others can't, time slips through her fingers in a blink, and nightmares start to take over her reality.
To match his superstar heroine, Finn goes all in on creating an unpredictable narrative that's full of jump scares, creepy imagery, and spine-tingling sound effects. There are even more violent injuries, body horror, and bloody deaths to make an audience recoil, and plenty of upsetting details, from Skye's compulsive hair-pulling habit (aka trichotillomania) to a group of smiling backup dancers chasing Skye through her apartment in choreographed formation. These scares can feel delightfully over the top, almost like a carnival ride, but they're as creative and horrific as the best parts of the Final Destination series.
Finn builds up Skye's story so that she's the perfect victim for this curse. She's battling her own demons and memories even before she's surrounded by those damned unnerving smiles. Skye struggles with the trauma of the car accident, as well as frayed relationships damaged by her struggles with addiction; others hold her history of addiction against her, assuming her current public meltdowns are nothing more than a relapse. As Skye, Scott is marvelous as our doomed heroine, acting out like a diva at her wit's end — yet one who’s resourceful enough to fight back against her omnipresent enemy. She performs the hell out of Cristobal Tapia de Veer's songs for the film, screams often and wildly, and wades through the bloodiness of her nightmares and worst moments of her life with equal amounts of fear and sadness.
As with the original, the monster's style of gaslighting damages the main character's relationships with those around her, further isolating her until there really is no escape. And as in the horror classic A Nightmare on Elm Street, some of these fateful visions have a way of affecting the real world. Given Skye's public profession, Smile 2 finds time to explore the trappings of fame and how even beloved artists can feel alone in the entertainment industry. Before her performance, Skye meets several fans, including one obsessed devotee who wants her to be more than just a parasocial relationship. The scary encounter disturbs her even after he's escorted away by security. As Skye's condition deteriorates, her momager (Rosemarie DeWitt) pushes her to stay on track for her tour and often brushes aside her objections because she's more worried about pleasing other industry folks, like music exec Darius (Raúl Castillo).
Smile 2 delivers the thrills and chills of its predecessor with an even more pronounced funhouse feel.
Skye's saving grace is her estranged friend Gemma (Dylan Gelula), who steals almost every scene she's in and brings in-jokes to break up Skye's increasingly bewildering situation. They're longtime friends who split over a year ago, and their estrangement has weighed heavily on Skye. In her moment of need, Gemma is the only person she can count on, and yet the thought of reaching out terrifies Skye almost as much as being left alone. Their relationship is one of the forces inspiring Skye to face her problems, but it's also one of her many sources of heartache.
It's not often that a sequel exceeds its original, but Smile 2 delivers the thrills and chills of its predecessor with an even more pronounced funhouse feel. The twists and turns of Finn's script can be just as shocking as many of the jump scares, defying expectations multiple times in a scene. The body horror dial feels a bit more turned up, with less time spent on explanations since the movie operates with the understanding that audiences have seen the original. Instead, Finn's script leads Skye through various deceptive paths at a swift pace, each one more outrageous than the previous, knowing that nothing is as effective at unnerving its audience as showing off that creepy toothy grin for an uncomfortable amount of time.
Finn and his cinematographer, Charlie Sarroff, also have fun visually turning the movie on its head — sometimes literally. For example, several iconic shots of New York City, where Skye is supposed to kick off her grand tour, are flipped upside down, emphasizing that something is very wrong with our character. In another scene when Skye is lying in bed next to Gemma, the camera is tilted on its side, once again playing with perspective to show their close proximity to one another. If you watched the original, you'll know to expect the gore and the jump scares, but Finn has more surprises in store all the way to the credits, subverting some of his own story beats and keeping the audience in suspense even if they're already fans of Smile.
