'Smile 2': Review

Dir/scr: Parker Finn. US. 2024. 127mins

The life of a scrutinised pop superstar is stressful enough without having to worry about losing her mind. But that possible fate awaits the main character of Smile 2, an intense follow-up to the 2022 hit that lacks its predecessor’s novelty and smarts. Writer/director Parker Finn returns for this sequel, which casts Naomi Scott as a singer recovering from addiction and the death of her boyfriend who has terrifying visions of people with rictus grins. In the early going, the film delivers plenty of chills alongside some sly commentary about the music industry, but eventually Finn succumbs to the trite horror tropes the original picture so nimbly avoided.

Succumbs to the trite horror tropes the original picture so nimbly avoided

Opening in the UK and the US on October 18, this Paramount release hopes to capitalise on the Halloween season; the film’s closest horror competition is next week’s Venom: The Last Dance. The 2022 original grossed $217 million worldwide on a low budget, and if this follow-up also enjoys significant commercial success it could spawn a new fright franchise for a studio that already has the Scream series and the Paranormal Activity pictures – although that latter IP has been fairly morbund for the last decade.

Scott plays Skye Riley, one of the biggest names in pop music, who is about to launch her comeback tour after rehab for alcohol and cocaine addiction. It has been a year since her actor boyfriend Paul (Ray Nicholson) died behind the wheel in a car crash that she barely survived, and Skye wants to prove that she has put her nightmarish past behind her. But when she visits a drug-dealer friend, Lewis (Lukas Gage), to get Vicodin for her bad back, she is shocked to find him in a state of severe paranoia, his face suddenly breaking out into a menacing grin before he kills himself. Soon, she starts imagining that people around her have that same disturbing smile. Is it all in her head? Or is she in danger?

Those who saw Smile, which was also written and directed by Finn, as well as the original 2020 short film, Laura Hasn’t Slept, will know what has befallen Skye. And part of the problem with Smile 2 is that the audience is ahead of its protagonist, who is unaware that she has inherited a curse that is passed from person to person, each of them dying a week after they first are ‘infected’ by the demonic presence that quickly bedevils their mind. Much of Smile’s pleasure is derived from unravelling that mystery but, although Finn again demonstrates a flair for stylish compositions and an ironic sense of humour, the surprise is missing in this sequel.

Initially, it seems that Smile 2 has hit upon a clever conceit, using the anxiety-inducing world of an in-demand pop star as the perfect cauldron for such a nerve-shredding horror scenario. Trying to placate her ambitious mother Elizabeth (Rosemarie DeWitt), who is also her manager, Skye is under incredible pressure as she prepares for this highly anticipated comeback tour, which will be an expensive, lavish spectacle. Working again with cinematographer Charlie Sarroff and editor Elliot Greenberg, Finn depicts Skye’s life as a slick but suffocating fishbowl environment of endless meet-and-greets and tour rehearsals. Even before she is plagued by those smiling figures, it is clear she is trapped in a lonely, dehumanising existence in which she is simply a commodity to be sold.

But for that conceit to really connect, Skye would need to be more compellingly drawn. Scott, a 2015 Screen Star of Tomorrow, is herself a singer, so she has both the voice and the presence to convey her character’s superstar bona fides. (Plus, the British actress more than capably pulls off an American accent.) But although Scott’s performance grows more anguished and desperate, Smile 2 fails to make either Skye’s backstory or present-day ordeal dramatically satisfying. 

As Skye’s sanity unravels, she will revisit the harrowing car crash that killed her boyfriend, but the film gets so bogged down in delivering predictable jump scares that it never really fleshes out her inner turmoil. Scott hints at the musician’s guilt, grief and resilience — the frightening faces she sees are meant to embody her struggles to stay sober — but, as the terrors increase and Skye goes to absurd lengths to combat the images in her head, the emotionally scarred person inside the superstar remains unexplored. Smile 2 has its audacious moments but, as Finn’s script unveils implausible plot twists, this sequel elicits neither terror nor smiles but, rather, shrugs.