I didn’t like Smile. The 2022 horror film felt like a clone of much better films, a mixture of the prevailing ideas the horror genre had been exploring for the past decade. The curse plot felt too much like It Follows but the concept wasn’t as tight. The curse was also explained multiple times with little new information each time; it’s pretty clear what’s happening early on but characters are still explaining it going into the third act. The real monster being a personification of grief and trauma felt like a worn out idea and the scares were obnoxious and repetitive. I also don’t think it’s a film which respects its audience: the moment I realised just how much I disliked Smile was when the dead cat was discovered and there’s an close-up insert shot of the cat’s collar as if the filmmakers don’t think the audience is smart enough to piece together that the dead cat is the same one that went missing ten minutes earlier.
Because of my reaction to the first film I was going to skip Smile 2. I saw the trailer and had little interest. But I heard some positive things about it from people who share my opinion of Smile and thought, okay, I’ll take a chance on it. I’m so glad I did. It’s great and such an improvement over the first film. It’s the concept done right on the second attempt. Somehow the sequel to a reductive horror film feels so much fresher than the original.
Fame is such an interesting idea to play with and fits the concept wonderfully. A horror film with a celebrity protagonist feels new and innovative. A pop star is used to everyone around her smiling, from sycophants to sociopaths, and her having to navigate the curse is fun to watch. The tone of the sequel is much improved. It’s still dark when it needs to be but it’s fun to watch whereas the first film was pretty dour expect for a few comedic moments I didn’t know were intentional or not. The humour is much better handled here. The situations allow for some darkly funny moments, like the cruelly ironic opening, and the film parodies the idea of celebrity. Turns out you can have more fun with pop stars than you can with mental health workers and cops.
Naomi Scott is exceptional in the film as Skye Riley, believable in all aspects, including as a pop star. Thank God it didn’t star the cop character from the first film. Skye is a much more dynamic character than Rose was in Smile. The ‘entity’ represents different things for her: the pressure of her work and fame, guilt over her past actions, her addiction. There’s more to taunt her with. The entity’s other reality-skewing powers felt unnecessary in the first film because there was limited ammunition to attack Rose with. Here there’s plenty and the best moments weren’t to do with the smiling but the other terrors it could unleash. The crazy fan getting undressed in her apartment was the film’s scariest moment, preying on very real disturbing fears.
I know it’s key to the concept, is the concept, but I don’t like the smiling. I find it cringy rather than creepy. I don’t feel fear but embarrassment. All the best moments of Smile 2 come from the other scary aspects of the curse, the tricks it plays to prey on Skye, and I’m glad there was surprisingly little of the smiling. But when it is used it’s much better than in the first film. Casting Jack Nicholson’s son doesn’t hurt, although it’s less to do with his grin and more to do with the crazy eyebrows he’s inherited. The smiling dancers were also great, climbing on top of each other, and moving like the Weeping Angels from Doctor Who, which is about as scary as it’s possible to get.
Smile 2 also has a better grasp on the rules of the curse, or rather an acceptance of how loose and undefined they are. Would stopping Skye’s heart really work? Who knows, but that’s the kind of question I had after watching the first film. The rules are loose and there are loopholes that the first film felt unaware of but the second film embraces and makes part of the story. And the sequel only explains what’s happening once because the first film did it enough for ten films, and those usually awkward exposition scenes were handled well. The escalation of the curse was also much better here, ramping up the horror rather than just replaying the same level of scare over and over again.
The film’s third act maybe has one false-reality-inside-another-false-reality too many but overall I liked the twists and turns it presented. The one character in the film I didn’t like, who didn’t seem to fit, was revealed to be a fake so I’m especially happy with that twist. But it can be hard to invest in the drama when it can all be revealed to be an illusion, when it never feels like Skye can actually win. But I was shocked how well it worked and how quick the 127-minute runtime flew by. A horror film with this concept should be a tight 90-minutes but somehow it got away with it.
It’s amazing how much Parker Finn has developed as a writer and director between the first and second film in just a two years. Smile 2 is well written and handsomely directed. The film’s prologue is brilliant. I don’t always like the long one-shot takes but this example really worked and sucked me into the action. It was frantic but also didn’t ruin the slower build up to the horror seen in the rest of the film. Although, I didn’t like the random upside down shots of New York. Yes, Skye’s world has been turned upside down, very clever, Parker. I’m not convinced he should proceed with his remake of Żuławski’s Possession, but I don’t think anyone should touch that film. I’m far more eager to see what Parker Finn does for the next Smile film after that killer ending, and after being disappointed in the first film I’m shocked just how badly I want more.
