Smile 2 is an advancement in every possible way, making its predecessor feel like a proof of concept. This time, Naomi Scott plays the central protagonist, Skye Riley, an artist coming back from emotional trauma after she survived a car crash that killed her partner, Paul whilst both were highly intoxicated on drugs.
As the film picks up with Skye, she is making a first public appearance on a morning chat show hosted by Drew Barrymore, and for all intents and purposes, she is on the mend and ready to get back on tour, which her overbearing mother, played by Rosemarie DeWitt is all to keen to get to as she rebuilds her public message. Yet, she still isn’t completely fixed, throughout the films, we see her downing bottles of branded water as a way of acknowledging her desire for drugs and alcohol.
One night she meets Louis, her dealer who she went to school with. However, when she arrives at his apartment, he doesn’t remember receiving her message. His eyes have massive bags under his eyes and the film continues with the similar facial profiles of the original to tell the audience he has been infected by what the film calls a parasite, infecting him until he has a hellish smile which he passes onto Skye.
The film’s director, Parker Finn has clearly had a larger budget to work with for this sequel (look for figure), and you can tell. The film looks much higher in production value, but perhaps more notably it takes more time to develop and flesh out characters. Finn opens with a scene in a cabin, where an infected subject tries to kill a drug dealer in order to pass the parasite onto another host. The scene is gripping and tense, slowly revealing the themes of the film whilst reintroducing the audience with this smiling parasite. It lasts for about ten minutes and this is the sort of slow-burn nature the film is going for.
The film uses horror to show the popstar, both their influence but also how their fame infects their personality. The first instance of this is in the talk show sequence where Skye is giving a sanitised version of events to her audience, something that would keep her in a favourable eye within the public image. It is about remembering the lines that her manager wants her today, unable to have a personality beyond a media-friendly, bubbly one that will sell well. In other scenes the film attempts to show the influence of fame with fans, who queue up and express their love for Skye, desperate to receive affection. It is a world that is fake, fictitious and sanitised, and the film is able to connect this to the horror. As Skye begins to see things she freaks out but these also feel like emotions one would have with this level of obsessive fandom.
Smile 2 also follows the style of its predecessor. Especially with its use of close-ups which present a demonic face in a shallow depth of field that feels deeply intense. Whilst the film also has wild crash zooms and audacious camera moves that you notice, however, this adds to the film’s over-the-top horror aspects rather than distracts. The film also uses horror to show the recovering drug addict and uses its central antagonist and premise as a way to create distance between the recoveree and the people closest to her. The film uses perspective particularly well in this sense, showing both sides, the horror almost becomes cringe-inducing as we know how Skye’s actions will be perceived.
However, part of my struggle was wondering if the sequel was necessary. It rehashes many of the ideas of the original, and although the film has some nice horror moments, the central premise is much the same. Whilst it aims to add mythos and continue the mystery elements of the original, it lost me in its inability to distinguish reality, particularly towards the end. There is one scene where a character disappears and they never return and this feels unexplained and becomes distractingly discombobulating.
On the whole, much of Smile 2 works. It is grander in scale but also theme and character. However, I couldn’t brush the feeling that a lot of the ideas in terms of horror feel the same as the original. Following the same beats, there is little suspense in knowing where the story is going.
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