Movie Review : Smile 2 (2024)

The conventional signifiers of horror have stopped working on me. Darkness? Please. Ghosts? I wish. The occult? Paganism? I’m more likely to be taking notes than calling the cops. Half the time, I identify with these people. No, what scares me now is wrongness. The kind of scene that makes your brain’s internal narrator stutter and mumble "wait, what? I’m more afraid of finding a tweaker naked in my condo, beating off over my dog’s cadaver, than of any specter in cinematic history.

The ending of Ari Aster’s Hereditary didn’t get me because Annie got possessed; it got me because a malevolent entity hijacked an actual mother, rewired her to be something unrecognizable, and everyone around just… lived in that new reality.

That’s why the first Smile worked for me, even if the gimmick was screamingly obvious. The malicious grin hinted at something, and that something was ambiguous enough to stay interesting. But Smile 2? That peek into the-end-of-life-as-you-know-it now means everything and nothing at the same time: addiction, codependency, mental collapse, the psychotic pressures of fame. Once you start explaining the metaphor to death, the metaphor stops breathing. You can’t hint at something if you spell it out.

Smile 2 tells the story of Skye Riley (Naomi Scott), a fictional hybrid between Lady Gaga and Amy Winehouse mounting a comeback one year after a doped up car accident killed her boyfriend (Ray Nicholson) and left her grievously injured. She’s mostly clean now, except for the Vicodin she buys from a high school friend (Lukas Gage) to manage a nagging back injury. What she doesn’t know is that her old buddy has been infected with the Smile curse.

And soon, Skye starts seeing grins. Not happy smiles. Not polite smiles. The kind of smile you’d see on a wax figure right before it comes alive and ruins your day. They’re everywhere. On stage. At meet and greets. In her dreams. Her whole world lights up with a smile, and not in the Instagrammable way.

Style Over Soul

Here’s the annoying thing about Smile 2: the curse isn’t mysterious anymore, it’s fucking everywhere and everything. It’s in her dreams, it’s hallucinations, it’s the background noise in too many scenes. And guess what? The more smiling creeps show up, the scarier it’s supposed to get? There’s this one moment where her entire dance troupe storms her walk-in closet grinning like lunatics and then, surprise! It’s all in her head. Great visual, zero sense. It's a glorified music video concept.

Smile 2 gives away purpose and meaning in tiny, incremental sacrifices, like a bad magician showing you the ropes instead of pulling a rabbit out of a hat.

There’s this other scene where Skye’s friend Gemma (Dylan Gelula) sleeps next to her, then her face morphs into a hellish grin and bam! Her face turns into car headlights right as Skye jolts awake. Sure, the visuals are fantastic. That jump scare hits like a fist to the gut. But just like that, the movie pulls the teeth out of its own cursed smile. Suddenly, it’s not possessed automatons stalking her, it’s her own fucking guilt over the car crash, all wrapped up neat and tidy.

Too clear. Too safe. Like a horror movie that’s afraid to actually be scary, so it just settles for psychedelic therapy session vibes.

The first Smile nailed that Silent Hill-style ending. A brokenness inside the vessel, subtle and symbolic, and honestly, that ambiguity worked beautifully. I’m here for that. Skye had a chance to go inward, wrestle with her own demons the way Joel did in the original. But no. Writer-director Parker Finn (or maybe Paramount execs with a fetish for fireworks) decided to slap on a "big finish" instead.

And sure, Smile 2 delivers something big, but it’s the kind of big that leaves you empty, like a party with all the lights on and nobody having fun. Visuals over meaning, again. Same old story, different glitter.

Is More Necessarily Better?

Bill Simmons has this sports theory calledthe disease of more." It’s when a winning team messes with its lineup to add a supposedly better player and in doing so, kills the chemistry that actually made them win. That’s exactly what happened here. Horror movies live by the "less is more" rule. Smile 2 needed to isolate Skye, make her alienated, trapped, but instead she spends forever wandering through cool-looking, superficial set pieces that feel like they were designed by someone who just discovered Instagram.

Skye ends up with zero agency in her own story because Parker Finn is so hooked on his metaphor-for-the-hardships-of-celebrity that she’s reduced to being the scared girl in the haunted house. Even though she had the guts to sneak out and score drugs earlier, that spark is smothered under a fog of telegraphic terrors dressed as vague responsibilities.

Somewhere in the production, someone had a vision, a slim, promising idea and it got twisted into a painfully obvious PSA about the dangers of fame. And if you ask me, no one’s going to watch a horror movie to get a lecture on stardom.

*

In case it wasn’t obvious enough: Smile 2 sucks Sure, some critics gave it a polite nod, but if you liked this, I’m pretty sure you don’t care about good horror cinema. This movie is so spectacularly mediocre in the most disappointing, Blumhouse-assembly-line way that it doesn’t even deserve the courtesy of a hate watch. Please, no more sequels. If there is one, you won’t find me in the theater and you won’t fin another review here

Sorry, Parker Finn, but you’re better than this dumpster fire. So, do better

4.5/10

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