Like its Predecessor, Smile 2 is Nothing to Grin About
Smile 2 picks things up six days after the demonic climax of Smile with Joel (Kyle Gallner), a grizzled police detective who had the tragic misfortune to see his former girlfriend get devoured by an invisible demon while flashing a creepy grin, nearing the end of his mental rope. Things do not go well for him. One week later, pop star Skey Riley (Naomi Scott) is in the New York apartment of former high school friend and drug dealer Lewis (Lukas Gage) when he seems to have a psychotic fit before committing suicide with a gigantic smile on his face. She should have stayed home.
Written and directed once again by Parker Finn, those events happen within the first quarter of the 127-minute sequel to 2022’s surprise box office smash. Where do things go from there? Broader canvas, bigger budget, higher body count, and more complicated set pieces notwithstanding, things descend down the same dank, dark, and psychologically fractured hole that the previous installment did. Is the mythology regarding the carnivorous entity stalking Skey expanded upon? No. Was I surprised by anything that happened? Also no.
Some may construe those statements as spoilers, but I would disagree. Finn does have some new tricks up his sleeve. By making Skey one of the biggest stars on the planet, he gets to showcase her mental devolution under a withering spotlight primarily composed of screaming fans, flashing cameras, and omnipresent exposure on social media. There’s no place for the young woman to hide.
As good as all that is, I have the same issue with Smile 2 as I did with Smile. Skey is an addict trying to get her life back together after a horrific car accident. She feels culpable in the death of her movie star on-again-off, off-again boyfriend (Ray Nicholson) who died in the crash. She’s being hounded by her helicopter mother (Rosemarie DeWitt) and a record label executive (Raúl Castillo) who are eager for the young woman to get back to work, her mental and physical health be damned. All of this makes Skey every ounce a wounded soul.
This sequel does not care. If anything, the story doubles down on almost all of the illusionary aspects of the original and it has great fun telling visually rambunctious falsehoods that blur the line between fact and fiction. Like the demon haunting her, the film feeds on Skey’s trauma and asks the audience to do the same. It takes her on a journey where the outcome is unctuously preordained, and Finn does not do much to confuse the viewer or try to make them think something unexpected is about to happen.
Whether or not Skey gets a happy ending is not what annoyed me. To paraphrase my review of Smile, a final girl doesn’t need to win the day for a viewer to exit the theater satisfied. Horror films, by their very nature, don’t always need to conclude with the villain being vanquished and for hope to spring eternal. Quite the opposite is frequently, and satisfactorily, the case.
But what I believed in 2022 (and long before that) still holds true in 2024, and that is that the protagonist be treated with respect (and at least some small modicum of decency). Yet, based on what I’ve seen from him so far, I’m starting to surmise that Finn does not believe items like trauma, grief, and addiction can be overcome. It is like he is saying that, once you start traveling down those or similar roads (let alone multiples of them at once), you might as well fold your hand and give up then and there. You won’t win. You will lose. And, worst of all, you will potentially destroy anyone left in your life you may care about in the process.
None of this makes Finn any less talented. He stages several outstanding sequences, showcases a giant, mostly practical monster (co-created by Academy Award-nominated effects maestro Alec Gillis, who between this and Alien: Romulus is having a banner year), and delivers a terrifyingly dazzling corker of a set piece in Skey’s apartment that feels indebted to the iconic opening dance sequence of Gaspar Noé’s 2018 thriller Climax. He also gets a barnburner of a performance out of the multitalented Scott, and if I liked the film even a tiny bit more, her transformative work as the troubled singer would be enough on its own for me to cut this sequel some slack.
Sorry. While I’m sure I’ll again be in the minority, for all of its obvious strengths, and just like its predecessor, Smile 2 made me angry, and that’s all there is to say.
Film Rating: 1½ (out of 4)
