Smile 2 (2024 | USA | 127 minutes | Parker Finn)
On a superficial level, Smile 2, writer/director Parker Finn’s sequel to his surprise-hit shocker Smile, represents more of the same.
But the devil (Demon? Suicide virus?) lies in the details. And while it blazes no new trails, this sequel takes its predecessor’s It Follows/Grudge/Ring/urban legend-informed template and runs like cackling, gleeful Hell with it.
The basic synopsis for both Smiles is as follows: Protagonist sees a traumatized possible mental case suddenly brandish a psychotic smile and kill themselves gruesomely. Witnessing the suicide then infects/possesses said protagonist, who gradually unravels psychologically until they’re likewise in danger of turning smiling-psycho, committing suicide themselves, and infecting/possessing another hapless witness.
After an exhilarating cold open that provides (then cuts off) the only real link to the original’s characters, Smile 2 introduces its protagonist, Skye Riley (Naomi Scott). She’s a superstar pop singer recovering from the physical and emotional aftermath of copious drug use, alcoholism, and a car accident that left her scarred and claimed the life of her movie-star boyfriend (Ray Nicholson)—all while shakily navigating a massive comeback tour.
Skye’s wracked with severe physical pain from her accident, but due to her legally-obligated sobriety she can’t use anything stronger than Tylenol to combat her agony. One evening she visits the apartment of her old drug dealer pal Lewis (Lukas Gage), hoping to score some Vicodin. Lewis greets her in a cold sweat, manically nattering away about an evil force that’s hounding him. Soon, he’s flashing the kind of creepy grin that’ll be all too familiar to anyone who watched the original movie. Cue the beginning of a new cycle of encroaching insanity, possible supernatural evil, and bloody violence.
Smile became a big hit on the strength of a high-concept premise that—derivative as it was—decisively touched a nerve with moviegoers. That central conceit was barely substantial enough to fuel a ten-minute short, but Finn managed to flesh things out to feature length by navigating the suspense like a champ, and by creating a lead character (well-played by Sosie Bacon) that was sympathetic enough to keep audiences interested.
The movie’s staggering $217 million global box office take gave Finn the latitude to land a $28 million budget for the followup, almost double the original Smile’s $17 million price tag. And damned if the money hasn’t been put to mostly great use.
Even cut off from its pulp-horror coattails, Smile 2 delivers a splashy and energetic (if familiar) showbiz drama. The musical interludes feel 110% credible: Scott, most famous for her star turn in the 2019 live-action version of Disney’s Aladdin, definitely brings the goods as a singer and dancer. And I’d argue pretty readily that the fictional Skye Riley’s songs (many co-written by Scott herself) brim with enough hooks and craft to stand toe-to-toe with anything currently hovering at the top of the charts. Finn and DoP Charlie Sarroff maximize the opulence by bringing the vivid hues and velocity of a genuine movie musical when it’s needed.
The surface gloss serves to effectively amplify Skye’s sense of isolation within the massive show-business monolith surrounding her. And when she begins fully melting down (or does she?), Scott hurtles herself into those dark places with visceral abandon—substitute the horror trappings for a more earthbound addiction/recovery scenario, and her full-on performance would likely have Oscar voters salivating. Along the way, Finn and DoP Charlie Sarroff bathe the proceedings in retina-searing colors, with a camera that pirouettes, dives, glides, and rotates with almost obscene flourish.
Smile 2 wears its spiritual forebears on its sleeve pretty openly, so if you’ve seen a lot of movies, your mileage/patience through the laundry list of influences will vary. The musical-bio portion of Skye’s mental descent openly nods in the direction of Bob Fosse’s All That Jazz and the oft-retold showbiz melodrama, A Star is Born. Smile 2 ’s creepiness factor also owes a decent-sized debt to Satoshi Kon’s phenomenal giallo-informed anime, Perfect Blue, with its unreliable narrator and bad-trip mutation of pop star celebrity (it’s likely no accident that one of the most grotesque fans in Skye’s orbit bears a decided resemblance to Perfect Blue’s likewise grotesque fanboy antagonist). And while Smile 2 ends on a wonderfully ghoulish and grandly horrific note, that conclusion’s so effective that it stands a good chance of rendering the likely inevitable future sequels hollow and redundant in comparison.
If you push those qualms aside and go with the ride, however, Smile 2 could hardly be more entertaining—familiar beats and all. It’s a decadent, brutally effective, and unerringly creepy pop-art nightmare that also takes some surprisingly big creative swings for the fences. Here’s hoping that Parker Finn sees fit to keep expanding his vision…without beating a perpetually-grinning dead horse.
Smile 2 opens in theaters October 17.