by Anthony O'Connor
Worth: $15.50
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Naomi Scott, Rosemarie DeWitt, Kyle Gallner, Lukas Gage, Miles Gutierrez-Riley, Dylan Gelula, Peter Jacobson
Intro:
Disorienting, compelling and often mean-spirited, Smile 2 is the kind of flick that will have genre aficionados grinning from ear to ear and everyone else trying to hide behind their popcorn.
Smiling is a pretty bloody creepy thing, when you think about it. Opening your mouth, showing off your teeth and gums, exposing the inner workings of your moist eating/pashing orifice out of happiness or amusement? That’s some David Cronenberg nonsense right there. Evidently, American writer/director Parker Finn agrees with this sentiment as he gave us Smile in 2022 and now its brand spanking new follow-up, Smile 2.
The original Smile was surprisingly solid, despite a premise that was basically “The Ring but with facial expressions instead of cursed VHS tapes?” However, thanks to a fairly conclusive ending, it didn’t seem like the flick was crying out for a sequel.
But it made a shitload of money, so…
Smile 2 (which in 1987 would have been called Smile Too) brings us a new main character in the form of pop star, Skye Riley (Naomi Scott). Skye is about to embark on an ambitious world tour after spending a year getting clean and rehabilitating from a near-fatal car accident. The stress of the public eye, and intermittent back pain from her injuries, leads Skye to the apartment of her drug dealer mate, Lewis (Lukas Gage), to score painkillers. However, what Skye ends up taking home is a heaping helping of PTSD and a demonic entity that wants to drive her insane before causing her grisly demise.
The story of Smile 2 is essentially a retread of the original, particularly in the first half, but with the added bonus of being in the shoes of a troubled celebrity. Where the film excels is in its commitment to actually giving the lead character depth and nuance. This is helped immeasurably by Naomi Scott’s superb performance, who nails this role so hard it genuinely hurts when things start going tits-up for her. Watching Naomi slowly become isolated and withdrawn from her friends and family is profoundly disturbing, and you can’t help but hope that she finds a way out of her desperate situation.
The other big draw here is Parker Finn’s direction which, while never subtle, has a kind of swaggering chutzpah and almost sadistic glee in making each and every horror sequence as disturbing and visually arresting as possible. The score and sound design too, while they favour the STARTLING LOUD NOISE school of genre filmmaking, combine to generate a constant feeling of tension and unease that manages (just) to sustain the anxiety for the film’s slightly too long running time.
Smile 2 is a lot like its previous film, and has perhaps one too many twists in the final third, but it’s hard to argue with how bloody effective the damn thing is. Disorienting, compelling and often mean-spirited, Smile 2 is the kind of flick that will have genre aficionados grinning from ear to ear and everyone else trying to hide behind their popcorn.
