SMILE 2 (2024)
Now playing in theaters from Paramount Pictures!
Directed/Written by Parker Finn.
Trailer: https://youtu.be/0HY6QFlBzUY
Pop star Skye Riley (played by Naomi Scott) had a rough go of it last year as her drug addiction lead to the death of her actor boyfriend Paul (played by Jack Nicholson’s son Ray Nicholson). One year and an extended stay at rehab and Skye is ready for a comeback. But when she hits up an old friend for Adderall, Skye becomes afflicted with the smile curse—a highly contagious curse that slowly drives you insane until you are forced to kill yourself in a violent way in front of someone new in order to pass the curse along to the next poor schlub.

The original SMILE was a highly effective, yet highly derivative curse thriller. It was also highly popular so of course, they rushed a sequel out two years later. Thankfully, a lot of what worked in the original is present in SMILE 2. There’s the creepy ass music made of backwards playing odd instruments, strange angles making one feel uneasy and off balance, the reoccurring uncanny look of the stretched smile across a dead eyed face , and the frantic pace depicting a person slowly going from sane to insane in the span of a about two hours.

For some reason, many have said SMILE 2 is even better than the first SMILE film. I respectfully disagree as the original was a film deeply enmeshed with the Smile curse being a metaphor for trauma that follows one long after the horrifying event occurred. Upon witnessing a violent death, the cursed are haunted by that memory and driven to madness and eventually suicide. There is also a requirement for some to pass on that trauma to someone, be it a loved one or even a therapist. In the first film, a therapist experiences an extreme reaction to a client, it gave transference, and the lack of self-care a monstrous form. It is something that occurs often in the profession and the deft metaphor explored in the first film really makes how devastating those concepts really are.

Now I’m not saying SMILE 2 is bad, but instead of dealing with someone in the helping profession, it opens the film up to a broader audience by inflicting a pop star with the Smile curse. It’s fine that they do this. But the metaphor is lesser and feels much more like a cash grab than another profession that might experience extreme trauma like a cop or a fireman or an ER nurse. I feel like I can see the producers meeting now, with a bunch of suits asking, “What do the kids love these days?” And someone speaks up, “Well, my niece loves Taylor Swift.” And then the suit says, “Bully idea! We can lure in the tween market by appealing to the mainstream love of pop music! Make a movie about that! We can have dance numbers and songs for the soundtrack and behind the scenes shots of the lead drinking lots of water and let’s put Jack Nicholson’s son in it for the hell of it.” Everyone then nods in unison and the meeting ends and filming of SMILE 2 begins.

Now appealing to a wide audience is not a bad thing. I prefer a film to go a bit deeper than that, but the deeper you get into something, the more likelihood the film is not going to resonate. SMILE 2 feels like the first film, but with more appeal to that younger audience. It’s a dumbed down version of the trauma metaphor and I understand those in the helping profession are not the only ones who deal with trauma, and everyone processes trauma in their own way. Still, it just feels much shallower than the first film as it appeals to a more surface level obsession with pop culture. Keeping with the recording industry idea, it’s like SMILE was the first breakout album that broke ground and felt like a discovery to listeners, while SMILE 2 is the safe follow-up album meant to make money the band didn’t make from the first deal.

That said, the SMILE franchise is not as original as most would realize. It is very much like the rise in “curse” films that could be traced back to Universal classics like THE WOLF MAN and THE MUMMY. But it really began to pick up steam with the Cronenbergian STD body horrors of the 70’s and 80’s like SHIVER and RABID, or the spreading contagion zombie films of Romerolike THE CRAZIES, DAWN and DAY OF THE DEAD. Even the contagious nightmare dreams Craven worked with in A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET are worth mentioning. But it was J-horror films like JU-ON THE GRUDGE and RINGU that seemed to focus on the rise in tech and brought the curse films back into the limelight in the oughts. After films like that became Americanized, along came the massively influential IT FOLLOWS to revive the curse genre which heavily influenced many modern horrors today such as TALK TO ME, THE BOOGEYMAN, and of course, SMILE.

If you saw my SMILE review from a few years ago, you have heard this theory, but for the sake of this review and new readers, I don’t mind revisiting it. With the rise of cancel culture, where someone says or does something and it makes them a pariah, an outcast, a monster in a community, if you will. I feel the new rise in curse films over the years isn’t a coincidence. Like a cancelled person, something occurs, and that person is immediately marked, experiencing symptoms that make them an outcast in their peer group. This often occurs in high school, which is why a lot of these films revolve around teen stars and appeals to teen viewers. Sadly, with Twitter being the equivalent of high school for adults, the same shit happens there. But all you have to do with these films is replace cursed with cancelled, and you can see the metaphor pretty clearly. Of course, this is something humans have been doing since the Scarlet Letter, so while the cursed and outcasted sub-genre of horror might be trendy as all get out, it’s far from an original concept.

All of that said, I like SMILE 2 quite a bit. In this one Skye is cancelled because she is filmed taking drugs, physically fighting with her boyfriend, assaulting a cameraman, and then being involved in a wreck causing her boyfriend’s death. Skye’s goal in the film is to stage a comeback and she has a new album, a new hairdo, and a new management team consisting of her overprotective mother (played by Rosemarie DeWitt). Despite all of these attempts to remake herself, Sky’s reliance on drugs drags her back in to putting her career in danger. That same hindrance is what puts her directly in the headlights of the SMILE curse.

Naomi Scott is pretty darn phenomenal as Skye, our fading star staging a comeback. She goes through an emotional taffy machine and though she has done some horrible things, Scott still manages to be relatable and likable. No easy feat and with her boppy little noggin in the middle of the screen for practically the whole film, Scott is crucial in making this movie work. I can’t wait to see this actress again in more roles as Scott killed it both on singing and dancing on-stage and cracking up behind the scenes.

Much ado has been added to this film because it also stars Ray Nicholson, Jack Nicholson’s son. But honestly, he has a very small role and what he does isn’t that spectacular. He does have a scene where he does the Shining grin. So, there’s that. But I was much more excited to see Kyle Gallner, who kicked major ass in STRANGE DARLING. His role is small but served as a nice connective tissue with the original film.

There is plenty of crazy, trippy gore in SMILE 2, especially later in the film when our starlet’s cheese slides right off the ritz. The Smile monster itself looks different from the original, suggesting everyone sees the beast differently from the last. There is also some very creative gore and jump-scares, including a scene towards the end that felt a little too close to the ending of a far superior film, THE SUBSTANCE. Though there’s no way this film would have known about the similarities, as it seems both were filming at the same time.

What I am thankful for is that both TRAP and SMILE 2 are released and I don’t have to see two trailers cut the exact same way to appeal to Swifties in theaters. Past the grab for mass appeal, I hope SMILE 3, and you know there will be another one, given the reception to this sequel, goes to a deeper subject to plum for trauma like the aforementioned police, fireman, or nurse angle. But who am I kidding? The only bigger and better arena to go is politics, so I imagine that’ll be the next area where smiling will be a curse.

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Music Written by Tim Heidecker
Music & Arrangement by Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy https://youtu.be/PDySbxQgZMg
(I do not own this music)