How do you top a sleeper hit featuring the slow-burn psychological terrors of an unseen antagonist, haunting and wrecking the lives of its victims to the point that death is their only escape route? You focus your franchise on a pop-culture problem child to promote your probable franchise!
Smile 2 has finally arrived, and just in time for Halloween!
Everything (and everyone) that gets involved with the life of Skye Riley (played by Naomi Scott) seemingly falls apart. It’s like she’s got the kiss of death. Ever since the self-destructive pop-music prima donna designated hard drugs as her go-to means to overcome the rigorous demands of her career, her recording label and millions of fans around the world, things have been gradually going downhill.
A previous world tour was scrapped when she couldn’t pull her life together and then there was the infamous car accident that took the life of her best friend and irreparably damaged her body — let alone the mental scars that never seem to disappear.
She’s pushed everyone out of her life, including her best friend (Dylan Gelula) and her overzealous manager-mother (Rosemarie DeWitt). Nobody knows exactly how much pain she is suffering. But here she is, attempting to overcome the odds yet again, hoping to make this latest comeback a reality that celebrities of all sizes crave to be a part of. But will an invisible entity curse this underdog story before it even gets off the ground?
That’s a whole lot to overcome, but first, let me preface this review by disclosing my thoughts about the first film.
Originally released in 2022, Smile had an estimated budget of $17 million and cashed in $217.4 million at the box office, but I still believe it’s an underrated film. Even though the movie features a similar theme to other successful supernatural horror releases, to this day, I still don’t think it receives enough credit for what it brought to the big screen. That, in itself, should be enough to motivate Writer-Director Parker Finn into creating a very different type of story as its sequel.
Again, an actor was chosen to lead this project whom I’d never seen before, which I’m absolutely fine with. There were no preconceived expectations, whatsoever, given to Naomi Scott, and she does an exceptional job at making Skye relatable and vulnerable. The storyline alludes to her character being a child star who eventually grows into her celebrity status. Sure enough, her entitled tendencies can be seen in many of today’s stars, but her bad behavior doesn’t define her — it’s her reactions that have a lasting input. She is incredibly self-absorbed and self-destructive, but at one brief point, the problem child actually means well… and then all hell is released.
A supernatural entity makes for an absolutely appetizing antagonist. Its forces of evil know no limits and after two films have been released, there’s still very little that’s actually known about it. In a tried-and-true trope, nobody wants to believe a parasitic, sinister phenomenon could somehow infect a person into doing unspeakable acts, but that is exactly what is happening here. There will always be different shades of good and bad people out there, but what if something so strong was actually to blame?
If that could be believed, would we see these horrible people in a different light, altogether?
Skye feels all alone in her head, fighting off something she cannot see and receives no assistance from her friends and family, who don’t believe her. It’s enough pressure to make her rip the hairs out of her head, which makes me wince every single time. And whenever body horror rears its gruesome head in movies, immediate shudders travel down my spine. I truly felt her pain. Multiple times.
Our Big Bad doesn’t have a name yet, although it’s received a few different titles: The Smile Entity, The Smile Demon and The Monstrosity. Recognized as a metaphysical “curse” that spreads from victim to victim, its strength is creating hallucinations for its host, blurring the lines of reality to the point where madness is an inevitability. Who’s really in control in this scenario and is life worth living if the answer is unacceptable?
As a sequel, Smile 2 gives our bad guy a little bit of a backstory, but not a whole lot. And for the first time, a full-bodied appearance briefly emerges. Hopefully it’s enough to whet the appetite for the masses of this spooky season to demand a trilogy wrap-up story (although all GOOD horror stories tend to outlast their franchise expectations).
I still don’t know how, exactly, the actors from both films have created such creepy, evil expressions (Jack Nicholson’s Joker always comes to mind, as an example). I assume prosthetics are somehow involved, possibly CGI, but I’m hoping it’s all real! The distorted sound effects and music of Cristobal Tapia de Veer set the creepy tone immediately for a few really great jump scares scattered throughout and by the time this “upside down” story concludes, a Smile Universe could be spawned.
I enjoyed the psychological horror that is on display and if you can accept this sequel isn’t a carbon copy of the original film, you should enjoy it as well.
The horror releases of 2024 have been inspired, to say the least, including Alien: Romulus, Longlegs, Terrifier 3 and now Smile 2, but there’s still more time available to add to this list. I can’t wait to see what else emerges from this year’s darkness!