Say cheese and die!
Let me get my one real gripe out of the way up front, because it’s just about the only complaint I’ve got. Smile 2 has a storytelling ceiling welded into its very premise. We are, after all, experiencing the effects of a curse subjectively: the demonic hex that afflicts characters in these films makes its victims hallucinate, see people who aren’t there, and witness things that never happened. This means Parker Finn gets to pull the old “it was all in her head” rip-cord over and over. Sometimes it’s a gut-punch: in one pivotal scene we watch one character commit an act of brutal violence with a broken shard of glass, only for a POV tilt to reveal — to Skye and to us, in the same horrible instant — that she’s the one holding the glass, that she did it. Terrific, horrifying moment. But more often the film simply rewinds or fast-forwards to un-ring a bell it only just rang, and as a narrative engine that’s pretty darn cheap. This pattern deflates the stakes and diminishes the impact of some of the movie’s biggest moments.
All right. There goes the list of complaints.
Because other than that, Smile 2 is one of the most gripping and well-told horror movies of the past decade, and it is genuinely astonishing how much better it is than Smile 1. Finn takes the jump-scare-heavy horror mode and chilly, geometric visual style he developed in the original and blows it up into something more extravagant and expressive. It tops the original in just about every conceivable way. (I’m not even going to harp on the extravagant 127-minute runtime. I barely felt it. I was rapt.)
The biggest leap comes in the screenplay, which, like the first, is written by Finn; though you’d be forgiven for assuming a totally different person was responsible. The original’s turnkey, half-assed take on trauma-as-horror has been swapped out for something far more layered: a scenario about a pop star on the brink of breakdown that doubles as a satire of the dehumanizing, exploitative grind of the entertainment industry, wrapped around a surprisingly potent character study of a woman trapped between glittering fame and unprocessed grief. Forced smiles are part and parcel for her job. The Smile demon, which manifests as performative and self-destructive outward gestures of violence, makes a tidy little metaphor for celebrity culture itself. Especially having just watched The Moment, whose entire reason for being was to capture a version of this exact character, I found Smile 2 somewhat miraculous in the way it tells the story better and is a great scare machine to boot.
The film follows pop superstar Skye Riley (Naomi Scott) a year out from a car crash that killed her boyfriend and triggered a stint in rehab. She is staging her comeback tour and resisting the siren call of her drug habit when she witnesses an act of violence that viewers will recognize from Smile 1 as placing a one-week curse on Skye, just in time for her first concert date. The symptoms of this appear to outsiders as Skye relapsing, and I suppose violent demon-triggered hallucinations are a horrifying drug trip of sorts. She spirals just as her manager and mother start putting more pressure on her, and the exploitative enterprise of building a business around one person’s creative labor (as interrogated in last year’s Lurker) emerges.
All of this rides entirely on the lead, and Scott hits it out of the park. I’ve come to realize that my favorite horror movies are almost always built on a wildly dynamic central performance, and while Scott isn’t quite Mia Goth in Pearl, she’s a small tier below… which, if you know how I feel about Goth in Pearl, is enormous praise. If I were assembling my 2024 B.A.D.S. awards today, Scott would be a genuine contender to take the Best Actress trophy home. It helps that she can actually do what Skye is known for: the one-time co-star of Disney Channel musical Lemonade Mouth has vocals, choreography, and stage-ready radiance, which all sell Skye as a credible pop star. This helps the scenario land so much harder. Scott puts Skye through considerably more highs and lows than Sosie Bacon’s character endured in the first film, and she never flinches. Her face is wonderfully cinematic, too, which Parker leverages well with long takes right up close. (I suppose my second complaint about Smile 2 is that it’s not more of a musical itself given the premise; but I’m convinced Parker could stage a hell of a proper musical from the snippets we get here.)
And just as crucial as Scott’s performance or Finn’s much improved screenplay is Finn’s direction. He’s using the roving, gliding camera of Smile 1 with more purpose (though a few camera spins still feel kinda pointless), and he’s making even better use of the titular image of an unholy grin, which he keeps handing to us in more and more inventive arrangements. It is unsettling every single time. Cristobal Tapia de Veer’s discordant score is just as creepy and jolting as it was the first time around, and it blends nicely with 2020’s electro-pop sounds – some of these musical cues sound like they could back Charli XCX or The Weeknd songs. I’m also smitten with Alexis Forte’s terrific costume design, which balance pop-star glamour against Skye’s mounting fragility.
The supporting bench is strong, too. It’s a real kick to see Dylan Gelula, co-star of my beloved Shithouse, as Skye’s best friend Gemma, and she brings her usual deadpan mean-funny mode. Kyle Gallner reprises his role from the first film as connective tissue between the two, and Rosemarie DeWitt does sharp, ambivalent work as Skye’s mother. She’s not a stereotypical stage mom, nor is she a comforting anchor for Skye, straddling between those two poles. I’m also glad to see even more Ray Nicholson after his turns in Novocaine and Borderline last year. He’s a great evil smiler.
Another striking element of Smile 2 that I cannot help but comment upon is how much it resembles another 2024 release: The Substance. The two traffic in a lot of the same ideas about the cruelty of the fame machine, transmuting those pressures into physical degradation. And they share a sensibility: maximal, visceral, strident, upsetting. The Substance is my favorite film of 2024 and one of my favorites of the decade so far, so the fact that Smile 2 lands in the same ballpark is a genuine shock. It’s not quite an Armageddon / Deep Impact level of cosmic twin-movie mirroring, but it’s close: The Substance is a Jekyll-Hyde riff and leans more towards body horror than jump scares, but the movies have many shared beats and images.
Horror is the genre that has benefited most from the current, jury-rigged state of the modern Hollywood production-and-distribution machine which has little room for mid-budget fare. In fact, it may be the only genre on a real upward trajectory industry-wide, fueled by a wave of young, hungry directors who’ve been handed chances, found traction with audiences, and, most importantly, made some actual good and original movies. Out of all of them, Parker Finn now sits near the top of my list, and that’s on the strength of this terrifically scary, provocative, well-made, well-acted, and even well-written sequel. The man has lots of nerve and the best evil grin in the business.
Is It Good?
Exceptionally Good (7/8)
Dan is the founder and head critic of The Goods. Follow Dan on Letterboxd. Join the Discord for updates and discussion.