‘Smile 2’ Review – Self-Destructing In The Spotlight

Pop singer Skye Riley (Naomi Scott, Aladdin), about to kick off a new tour, is on the verge of a comeback as she’s narrowly recovered from a nasty car wreck that claimed her boyfriend Paul Hudson (Ray Nicholson). Skye has also recently overcome alcohol and drug addiction, so this tour is a chance for her to start fresh while showing her fans that she’s still the artist they fell in love with.

With her troubled substance abuse past, no doctor will prescribe anything stronger than Tylenol to Skye despite her throbbing torso scars and constant back pain stemming from the car accident. When her Vicodin supply runs low, she calls her dealer Lewis Fregoli (Lukas Gage, Road House).

However, Lewis recently witnessed the Smile curse and he kills himself in front of Skye. With tour preparations underway, Skye’s already packed and stressful schedule is demolished to make room for an entity that intends to kill her before she can set foot on stage.

Writer and director Parker Finn is no stranger to surreal on-screen kills or tapping into the wildly unbelievable aspects of the mind playing tricks on the audience. But Smile 2 dives deeper into the subconscious. Skye is plagued by these grotesque visions and pushed to the brink of sanity, attempting to distinguish what is reality and what is a manipulative vision.

Jump scares get outrageously bonkers. Most notable visuals include Skye being forced to smile by someone’s fingers in her mouth while she’s in front of a mirror, Skye’s on-again-off-again best friend Gemma’s (Dylan Gelula) face morphing into a pair of car headlights, and a stalker suddenly being naked and attacking Skye in her apartment.

Skye rehearses choreography with a group of dancers to prepare for her tour. These preparations culminate in a sequence in which Skye sees these dancers show up in her closet and chase her whenever she’s not looking directly at them. They move in unison, and it’s such a visually unsettling sequence.

The performances in Smile 2 are frightfully spellbinding. Naomi Scott carries the film with a commanding yet broken-beyond-repair demeanor. She showcases every emotion imaginable, and you can see the look of terror in her eyes. Skye’s journey over the course of Smile 2 is pure mental and emotional anguish and Scott makes it all worthwhile.

Ray Nicholson deserves a mention. Most outlets are asking him about his father Jack Nicholson, but Ray does fine on his own. He has a maximum of maybe four minutes of screen time and every second on screen is burned into your brain. His unnerving smile and shocking interior car sequence with Naomi Scott are definite highlights.

Dylan Gelula will get the most laughs in the film with her dry yet humorous line delivery. Rosemarie DeWitt is a caring and controlling mother figure that is involved with one of the bloodiest sequences in the film. Lukas Gage makes an impact while acting coked out of his mind and making us all never look at a 35-lbs weight plate the same way again.

Everyone is comparing Smile 2 to the original film whether it comes to jump scares, gore, or production value. Smile 2 has a slightly bigger budget than Smile (at an $11 million difference). In sequels, the general idea is to be bigger than the previous film, but it feels enormous mostly thanks to Skye’s comeback tour.

There’s an ambiguity to the concept of in the first one. It’s demonic possession of some kind where new victims are the only ones capable of seeing horrific things: typically people they know who have died with an unshakable sinister smile and committing violent acts of self-harm. Smile 2 dives into new characters dealing with the same entity and curse from the original film only on a grander scale.

It showcases the bloody mayhem while keeping this entity’s intentions a secret. The thing feeds on fear and attention, but how it does so and what it gains from all of this is still unknown. Keeping all of that in mind the question arises regarding what happens when this entity taps into a larger audience – such as an entire stadium of people.

Suddenly this entity would have lifetime access to an all-you-can-eat buffet featuring its favorite meal.

Parker Finn continues to deliver gushy, gurgly horror with outlandishly terrifying ideas and fiendishly mesmerizing performances. The inescapable question of which Smile is better will ride on whether you prefer a more intimate and contained film in part one or the endless possibilities of a monster gaining access to an entire public fan base in Smile 2.

READ NEXT: ‘MADS’ Review – A One-Take Frenzy of Bloodshed