Key Takeaways
- Smile 2 ramps up its horror sequel stakes with celebrity pressures and extreme violence
- Parker Finn’s direction and a bone-chilling score create a tense, dread-inducing atmosphere
- Smile 2 explores trauma, grief, and mental health in haunting and relevant ways
What’s the scarier prospect: being haunted by an unstoppable smiling demon, or having to unwillingly put on a concert in front of a massive crowd? For Riley Skye, the main character in Smile 2, there’s no choice between them. She has to deal with both.
The new horror sequel from writer/director Parker Finn is a suitably bigger companion piece to its predecessor. Where Smile focused on the everyday traumas that people can carry with them, Smile 2 steps it up to the celebrity level, playing with the pressures and demands of being a massive star. It’s here where the story sinks its teeth, cruelly exploiting the often over-the-top schedule of a pop musician.
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Skye Riley (given many different shades in an excellent performance from Naomi Scott) begins the story with her own dark backstory. She recently survived a car crash that killed her actor boyfriend, and is mounting a new tour while aiming to maintain her sobriety. She’s already under a lot of pressure to earn back the trust of her fans and those close to her, but she is also still feeling the physical pain from her injuries.
Skye looks to numb this pain with Vicodin that she gets from her dealer, Lewis (Lukas Gage). However, Following a harrowing epilogue featuring the return of Kyle Gallner’s Joel from the first movie, the audience knows that Lewis’s days are numbered, and that the old familiar smiling demon wants to get its hands on Skye. After witnessing Lewis’s death (which has been highlighted in trailers for the film), it isn’t long before Skye begins having her own visions of smiling strangers, followed by more and more frightening encounters.
Smile 2 |
|
---|---|
Directed By |
Parker Finn |
Written By |
Parker Finn |
Starring |
Naomi Scott, Rosemarie DeWitt, Dylan Gelula, Lukas Gage, Kyle Gallner, Peter Jacobson, Miles Gutierrez-Riley |
Runtime |
2 Hours, 7 Minutes |
Release Date |
October 18, 2024 |
Smile 2 does the sequel trajectory right: it takes what made the first movie such a phenomenon and hit for horror fans and ramps everything up even further, raising the stakes even higher and finding new ways to scare the audience. As far as new voices in horror go, Parker Finn has suitably proven himself as a more than capable storyteller, utilizing camera tricks and narrative twists to keep viewers on their toes. The aforementioned epilogue which sets up the story is presented in one long take. Even though savvy viewers will know where the hidden cuts are, this technique still works to build tension and almost dare the audience not to look away. Finn also brings back the first film’s upside-down shots, which are both disorienting and vaguely haunting, giving familiar and otherwise perfunctory establishing shots a sense of uncanny dread.
Finn’s directorial eye is aided by an absolutely bone-chilling score from Cristobal Tapia de Veer. The atonal yet melodic drones laid over shots of New York make the city feel demonic in its own right, while pops of discordant choral singing punctuate moments of brutal violence and sell the disturbing nature of the images.
And disturbing they are. Terrifier 3Terrifier 3 may be inspiring walkouts may be inspiring walkouts, but Smile 2 is likely going to surprise the mainstream moviegoing audience with just how violent and gory it is. This is a level of practical horror bloodiness that hasn’t truly made its way into a big studio horror movie in a long time. It’s genuinely enough to make even the most hardened horror fan squirm in their seat. What makes this violence work is the fact that the movie isn’t sold on it. Smile 2 isn’t trying to claim that it’s the grossest horror movie of the season, but it could easily make that claim.
Of course, the blood and guts stuff doesn’t work without the other horror elements, and Finn knows his stuff. The quiet moments before jump scares are painstakingly dragged out, making what could feel like cheap tricks feel earned in the moment. Beyond those jump scares are truly unsettling horror setpieces, like a late-second act attack by a group of backup dancers which cleverly relies on nothing more than the movement of the performers to make things feel unsettling. It also helps that everyone in the movie clearly had a great time figuring out their scary smiling faces, as all of the actors do great wearing the demonic grin.
Aside from its surface-level scares, Smile 2 feels like it still has something to say about the nature of trauma and unresolved grief. Whereas the first film was about how trauma can be generational, Smile 2 seems to expand on that, implying that the trauma people carry with them cannot stay buried, no matter how much they try to throw on top of it. Naomi Scott’s performance as a pop star who is very clearly not well and only getting worse is harrowing. The fact that she is being pushed by her manager mom (Rosemarie DeWitt) to continue with her tour and other commitments despite the obvious breakdown just makes her haunting even worse. The movie’s story comes at a rather relevant time in pop culture, when stars like Chappell Roan are prioritizing their mental health over pushing themselves to perform. The timing of this particular story is almost prescient.
A recurring motif in Smile 2 is reflection, with mirrors playing a large part in numerous scenes. In many instances, the reflection of Skye Riley is the performance, the lie, the face she puts on for others. When the camera pulls back to show the real Skye, the mask slips off. There are plenty of layers to this symbolism, and the meaning of it all becomes apparent in the movie’s harrowing final act.
Horror fans are feasting well this October, and Smile 2 is yet another great meal. Far from being another flat, generic, big studio horror that relies on unconvincing CGI or PG-13 kills, Parker Finn’s sequel is a masterclass in how to take a story that’s already been told and ramp it up even further, finding new angles and new horrors to throw at an unsuspecting audience. There’s no doubt that horror fans will leave the theater with big, toothy, unsettling grins on their faces.
Smile 2 opens in theaters on Oct 18th.
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