Neither was the first one, so…

Smile 2 (2024):

The Plot: Staging a comeback tour a year after a traumatic car accident, recovering addict and international pop sensation Skye Riley (Naomi Scott) soon finds herself doubting her sanity when she’s tormented by a supernatural entity. Will she be able to get help from her mother/manager Elizabeth (Rosemarie DeWitt), former best friend Gemma (Dylan Gelula), or any of the dozens of people who depend on her financially? Does the mysterious stranger (Peter Jacobson) who claims to understand the nature of the demon/spirit have any answers? Regretfully, I must inform you, etc.

Since this is a sequel, I feel like it’s not a huge spoiler to say that the “supernatural entity” messing with Skye’s mind is real. While the movie frequently pulls the rug out from under its protagonist, revealing that what she just experienced only happened in her head, it’s clear from the start that these hallucinations are caused by something other than Skye’s mental illness. What exactly the demon/spirit is and how it works is a little less clear. I’ll do my best to explain it:

The spirit in the Smile movies haunts a person who witnesses the previous victim violently commit suicide. For the next six days, the spirit makes the person hallucinate with increasing frequency–usually dredging up past trauma, because no horror movie protagonist is complete without a traumatic backstory–before possessing the victim and forcing them to commit suicide in front of someone else, starting the cycle anew. The title refers to the telltale rictus grin of the victims and the spirit’s apparitions.

It’s a little convoluted. The premise (contagious haunting) and execution (spirit appears as normal people, but in this case with a creepy smile) have drawn comparison to It Follows, a vastly superior movie built on a very simple foundation: Some thing that only the protagonist can see hunts them at a walking pace and can take the appearance of any person*. With Smile, it’s almost as if writer/director Parker Finn needed to muddy the waters enough to make the premise legally distinct. Maybe that’s unfair. Finn has clearly put a lot of thought into his characters and the world they inhabit. At any rate, Smile 2‘s similarities to It Follows are superficial. It fails entirely on its own merits.

Before I delve into why I strongly disliked Smile 2, I should say that it’s a very well-made film. Finn and cinematographer Charlie Sarroff create a vivid world, effectively immersing us in Skye’s life of isolated luxury. The hallucinations are genuinely unsettling, even when they don’t feature a bit of the old ultraviolence, which they frequently do (this is a very gory movie). There’s a late sequence in Skye’s apartment when she’s swarmed by grinning dancers that is brilliantly choreographed and executed. On a technical level, Finn is an impressively assured filmmaker, although he’s still a bit too enamored with shots of upside-down cityscapes. It comes across as more of an affectation than a way to immerse audiences in the protagonist’s disorientation.

Where the film excels is in its ability to make Skye and her world feel real. What Smile 2 has to say about the pressures of fame and the sometimes parasitic nature of a star’s entourage isn’t exactly new, but it’s presented with a convincing attention to detail that makes the horror hit that much harder. The costumes and set design are both outstanding, and Skye’s music feels like something you could hear on the radio.

Naomi Scott’s dedicated performance especially does an excellent job of making the audience feel her terror and desparation. The whole cast is solid, but Scott really shines here. She carries the movie with a degree of commitment that makes even the non-horror scenes sometimes hard to watch. The work she does here is comparable to Florence Pugh’s in Midsommar in its intensity. There are moments of raw emotion that are honestly more harrowing than the gore. I’m thinking specifically of a flashback to Skye waking up in a car wreck and realizing that her boyfriend is dead, which made me feel like I was intruding on something real and personal**. It’s a testament to her skill as an actress, but the film’s emotional realism is also the source of its biggest issues.

The vividness of the characters and their world is at odds with the film’s messaging. We’re basically watching a realistic depiction of someone having an incredibly public mental breakdown. The film has some things to say about the isolating, even destructive nature of show business and stardom, but seems unclear on what it’s trying to convey about suicidal ideation, mental illness, and addiction. This was an issue I had with Smile as well. The suicide angle of the premise and the protagonist’s history of mental illness end up coming across as fatalistic. Is Parker Finn trying to argue that suicidal ideation is an inescapable death sentence that will inevitably ruin the lives of everyone around you? I don’t think he is, but that’s what Smile and Smile 2 are telling us.

For how carefully considered Skye’s world and emotional state are, Finn doesn’t seem to have a clear idea of what the movie is about. I don’t believe that every film–horror or otherwise–needs to have a grand thesis, but the Smile movies take themselves so seriously that the lack of substance is impossible to ignore. Other than using the titular “smile” to gesture vaguely at how it’s bad to tell depressed people to put on a happy face, all Smile 2 has to say about suicide is “hey, this is what it’s like if a demon makes you kill yourself”. Okay? I guess? There’s nothing inherently wrong with making a horror movie just to say “wouldn’t it be messed up if concept happened”, but the more depth and emotional realism you add to your characters, the harder that is to pull off without seeming shallow.

To put it bluntly: This movie is too smart to get away with being this dumb.

If you’re looking for some spooky Halloween horror this week, I can’t heartily recommend Smile 2. It is scary, well-directed, and well-acted, but ends up becoming emotionally punishing in a way that negates any enjoyment from being frightened and doesn’t have any thematic depth. At the very least, the film is an excellent showcase for Naomi Scott’s talent. Earlier I compared her to Florence Pugh, and I hope that she has a similarly varied career. Possibly without getting sucked into the superhero content machine***.

Even though I haven’t liked either of his two features, Parker Finn is a promising filmmaker. I’ll be interested to see what he does next. If that ends up being Smile 3, this film’s bleak ending does not give me high hopes for a more thoughtful script.

Smile 2 is currently in theaters, and will presumably end up streaming somewhere at some point.

*This isn’t the only review I’ve read that makes that comparison, but it is the one I’ve read the most. Editing! Fun stuff.

**Maybe that’s just the Englishman in me.

***For better or worse, Aladdin and Power Rangers don’t seem likely to be franchise commitments at this point.