Smile 2, a sequel to the surprise box office hit from 2022, isn’t content with offering up a rehash of what worked before.  Instead, it takes the original’s core concept and takes it to the next level.  Or perhaps ten levels.  The scares are louder and more gruesome.  There are actual set-pieces.  The actress in the leading role is more than just an exceptional scream queen–she sings, dances and plays the piano.  The soundtrack throbs ominously in the background until it delivers a deafening wallop.  The camerawork is frequently off-kilter, reflecting the protagonist’s topsy-turvy world.  As a piece of filmmaking, Smile 2 is certainly more impressive than the original.

The movie begins with Joel (Kyle Gallner), the “final boy” who became infected at the end of the original.  Joel is a detective who knows his share of low-lifes, and he figures that instead of him dying, why not one of the bad guys?.  According to the lore of this franchise, an infected person can only transfer the curse by killing an innocent person in front of a third party.  With that in mind, Joel breaks into a drug house and kills the lookout in front of the gang leader.  Unfortunately, the leader and Joel exchange gunfire and the leader dies.  However, a small-time drug pusher making a buy is unfortunate enough to witness everything, meaning that he’s been infected with the curse.  Before Joel can explain anything to the new victim, the rest of the gang arrives and Joel is killed in a car accident.

The unlucky pusher is Lewis Fregoli (Lukas Gage), who happened to go to high school with world-famous performer Skye Riley (Naomi Scott).  Riley was badly injured in a car accident a year ago and has been working hard to get her career back on track ever since.  When her back pain flares up during rehearsal, she calls up her old friend Lewis with a request for Vicodin.

At his apartment, Lewis appears to be having a nervous breakdown.  Or maybe he’s done too much cocaine.  Unbeknownst to Skye, Lewis has been tormented by the demon since the incident at the drug house.  (I feel like it’s a mistake for the demon to still not have a name after two movies.  The Sinister movies named their demon “Bughuul” and nobody complained.)  After Lewis freaks out over something that Skye can’t see, he smiles that awful smile and bashes his head in with a free weight.  Welcome to the club you never wanted to join, Skye.

Now that Skye has been infected, the movie uses her situation to comment on how horrible it is to be rich and famous.  Smile 2 often seems like it was inspired by the life of Brittany Spears.  Skye is surrounded by sycophants throughout the day.  Her mother keeps pushing her to do things she doesn’t want to do (damn those charity events!).  Her fans are basically a legion of energy vampires.  And when Skye isn’t trying to please everyone, she’s isolated in her high-rise apartment.  As if that wasn’t enough to handle, she starts seeing things that aren’t there and isn’t sleeping.  Stress and lingering PTSD from the car accident are partly to blame.  The accident didn’t just leave Skye hobbled, it also killed her boyfriend.  She feels really guilty about it because…she was responsible.

The depiction of guilt being an all-consuming thing was also explored in the first Smile.  Although neither movie espouses any religious beliefs, they are both infused with the  Judeo-Christian concepts of sin and punishment.  As someone who was raised Catholic, the notion that someone who commits one of the Seven Deadly Sins will be punished for eternity came through loud and clear to me in these movies.  Interestingly, the Smile movies also reflect the trend of people who are areligious, because neither forgiveness or penance is mentioned.  Instead, both protagonists die horrible deaths because they refuse to even forgive themselves of their sins.

If you’ve seen the first Smile, you probably won’t be surprised that Smile 2 also concludes with a massive deception on behalf of the demon.  As it gains more and more control over Skye’s mind–and by extension, all of her senses–everything they (and we) experience is suspect.  However, this time around the mind game the demon plays on Skye is significantly more complex, and the big reveal had my head spinning when it arrived.  (The entire gambit is clever but doesn’t hold up to scrutiny, though.)  You may have already guessed how this movie will end, and I won’t spoil it here other than to say that it ups the ante for the third entry of this franchise exponentially.

I love the audacity that writer-director Parker Finn brings to Smile 2.  Armed with a significant increase in budget, he transplants the original’s narrative structure into a completely new and larger setting.  Although the elements of the curse and its accompanying ticking clock are the same as before, combining them with the extravagant and pressure-filled life of a pop star was a masterstroke.  Instead of being trapped in one hell, the victim now is faced with two hells that she can’t escape from.  That both sides of Skye’s horrific story mesh so well speaks to how tight Finn’s screenplay is.  Even though it clocks in at over two hours, the movie proceeds at a brisk pace from one scene to the next with a sense of urgency that never overwhelms.  There’s a lot going on in Smile 2, primarily because he never lets us forget that the victim has a full life outside of being stalked.  It’s through Finn’s insistence on giving us a complete portrait of the victim that he elevates this movie into rarified territory: a sequel that is both true to the original while exceeding it in almost every way.

Smile 2 also gets high marks for how well it constructs the world where its ambitious narrative takes place.  Finn and cinematographer Charlie Sarroff put the camera on a swivel, panning every which way so that we are forced to experience the victims’ paranoia.  I chuckled every time the New York skyline was shown upside down, reflecting how Skye’s world has been, well, you know.  Everything about this movie feels authentic, including the choreographed dance scenes, the costumes, the stages and even the songs.  All of the technical elements of the movie (production design, costumes, lighting, editing, score) are top drawer.  There’s even a haunted dance number and it’s one of the most unforgettable scenes in the movie.

As the latest victim of the smile virus, Naomi Scott is remarkable as Skye Riley.  She brings unmistakable star power to her performance.  Like a lot of young actors these days, she tried to make her mark in IP-driven material.  (Remember the live-action version of Aladdin from a few years back?  She was in that.)  I have a feeling that after her performance in Smile 2, she’ll get her choice of roles in the near future.  In a year that includes several incredible performances by women in horror movies, Scott’s ranks near the top.  The supporting cast also provides several  memorable performances, including character actor Peter Jacobson (Law & Order) as a blunt ER nurse who insists he must kill Skye to save her.  Rosemarie DeWitt does a nice turn as Skye’s passive-aggressive mother.  Ray Nicholson, son of Jack, shows that devilish smiles run in the family.  Lastly, Dylan Gelula’s performance as Skye’s longtime (and long-suffering) friend Gemma reminded me of Janeane Garofalo.

Smile 2 is a brutal, gruesome and jarring experience that relentlessly assaults the senses.  It’s also bold, stylish and one of the best horror movie sequels ever made.  Highly Recommended.

Analysis

The Horrors of the Mind

As was the case with the original movie, Smile 2 is about how our guilt traps us in a hell of our own creation.  In the former, Rose Cotter (Sosie Bacon) was guilt-ridden over letting her mother die.  In the sequel, Skye feels the same way for causing the death of her boyfriend Paul.  In both cases, the demon latches onto their guilt and keeps throwing it in their face until it drives them to suicide.  

However, the real reason for Rose and Skye’s downfall is that nobody tries to help them.  For Rose, neither her family or friends intervene when she clearly needs help.  Witnessing a suicide would give most people PTSD, but Rose is forced to handle her mental illness alone until she reconnects with her ex-boyfriend Josh.  But by then it’s too late.

Skye also has PTSD from the accident, but everyone around her dismisses her erratic behavior because they depend upon her for their livelihood.  Even Skye’s mother insists that she push past the trauma because of financial reasons.  If Skye doesn’t keep her obligations, her record company could sue her to recoup the money they spent on her tour.  Although that mother-daughter exchange could have been fabricated by the demon, it has an air of truth to it that made me think it happened sometime before the events in the movie took place.

I mentioned above that neither character has a path to forgiveness because they are areligious.  Borrowing from the only faith I know, if they were Catholic they would be able to confess their sins to a priest, who would absolve them of those sins.  However, since neither practices a faith, they have no choice but to harbor their guilt until it eventually consumes them (with help from the demon).  I don’t know if Finn intended his movies to be interpreted as religious parables, but they definitely spoke to me in that way.

Sympathy for the Songbird

It’s probably not a coincidence that there have been two movies released in 2024 where a female performer plays a significant role in the plot.  Considering how much Taylor Swift–as well as other female performers–have saturated popular culture for several years now, it stands to reason that filmmakers like M. Night Shyamalan and Parker Finn would be inspired to create stories featuring similar larger-than-life characters.  How Shyamalan and Finn define their Swiftian surrogates couldn’t be more different, though.

Whereas Shyamalan sees Lady Raven as a compassionate and heroic figure, Finn’s Skye represents how stardom curdles the soul.  I mentioned above that I can see Finn using the life story of Brittany Spears as the template for Skye, in that both were forced by a parent to continue performing against their will.  Finn could also have been inspired by Kesha, who spent years trying to free herself from a contract with a producer she claims sexually assaulted her.  (There are probably other instances I could mention here, but my cultural touchpoints are limited.)

Viewed from the outside, Taylor Swift leads an incredibly charmed life.  Her friends include many famous people.  Her private jet took her from a concert in Japan directly to the Superbowl.  She can afford whatever she wants.  She’s worth a billion dollars and probably could double that amount if she worked steadily for another ten years.  I imagine she’s very happy and all that, but Smile 2 made me wonder how closely her public image aligns with her private reality.  Could you imagine if she pulled a Smile in front of one of her colosseum audiences?

Three Card Monty

I mentioned above how much bigger every aspect of Smile 2 is in comparison to Smile.  This includes the third act twist, when the demon reveals that it has complete control over the mind of its victim.  In the original, Rose went to her childhood home to confront her feelings over letting her mother die.  At that point, six days have passed when Rose believes that she’s finally forgiven herself for what she’s done.  Unfortunately, the demon shows her that her painful emotional reckoning wasn’t real, and Rose tragically relents to being killed.

In Smile 2, the deception the demon uses on Skye is equally insidious, but much more involved than it was with Rose.  During Skye’s meeting with Morris (Peter Jacobson) at the bar, he mentions that it’s already been three days since she became infected and insists that she let him kill her before it takes over her mind.  However, the demon was already distorting most of Skye’s reality by then, which was not the case for Rose at that point in the infection timeline.

Smile 2 implies that the demon was able to fabricate normal interactions between Skye and other people well in advance of the sixth day.  Her initial reunion with Gemma was entirely an illusion.  Accordingly, the morning when Skye oversleeps and her mother stops by her apartment is also an illusion because Gemma is also present.  Obviously, the demon in these movies is all-powerful, but the power it exhibits in the sequel is far greater than what we experienced the first time around.

While I loved the frantic ending, I was incredulous when it implied that everything we saw  during Skye’s last three days was an illusion.  Somehow, the demon was able to present one reality to Skye while she also went about her day normally in front of everyone.  Specifically, the accident she suffers on stage, her subsequent visit to the hospital and her trip to Staten Island were all happening in Skye’s mind while she was simultaneously preparing for her upcoming concert.  This means that the demon now has the power to subdivide the victim’s consciousness, an ability that it didn’t have in the first movie.  I think Finn played a little fast-and-loose with the demon’s powers in order to arrive at the slam-bang ending he envisioned, but I’m fine with it because I can’t wait to see how his follow-up addresses the tens of thousands of Skye’s fans who will be killing themselves in six days.

A Star is Born

Before seeing Smile 2, I read numerous accounts on social media describing Naomi Scott’s performance as phenomenal.  After seeing the movie I’m in complete agreement with that assessment, because her acting is compelling from beginning to end.  Scott’s high-wire act, which requires her to switch from being a commanding stage performer to a woman on the edge within the same scene, is a star-making turn for her career.  Interestingly, her breakthrough moment should have happened years earlier.

Scott previously took a trip on the IP express, appearing in the live-action version of Aladdin (2019), as well as the reboot of Power Rangers (2017) and Charlie’s Angels (2019).  While the latter two were under-performers, Aladdin made a billion dollars world-wide and should have opened doors for her.  I’m not sure why, but her career flew under the radar for five years until her buzz-worthy appearance in Smile 2.  How ironic it is that after playing Jasmine, a Power Ranger and one of Charlie’s Angels, a movie where her character kills herself with a microphone is what finally makes everyone take notice.

Get ready to be pummeled

For comparison purposes, the last movie I can think of with a similar number of loud jump-scares was The Conjuring 2.

Once in a Lifetime

One of the funnier moments in Smile 2 is the morning after Gemma shows up at Skye’s apartment.  I shook my head when Skye appeared wearing a Talking Heads tee-shirt because I didn’t believe for a second that Skye knew anything about that band.  Turns out that this shirt, like those featuring Nirvana, are sold at big-box retailers like Wal-Mart and Kohl’s.  Skye probably knows nothing about the Talking Heads other than they were a cool band back in the day.  (The shirt is from the band’s 1980 tour, which happened thirteen years before Scott was born.)  I wish Finn had included an exchange like the one below in that scene:

Gemma: So, you like the Talking Heads, huh?
Skye:  Yeah, they’re cool.
Gemma:  Who’s their lead singer?
Skye:  (sighs)  Fine, I bought it at Wal-Mart.