Smile 2 (2024)

Despite the fact that one of the best scare moments was unwisely shown in the trailer for the movie, Smile was a horror movie that I quite enjoyed when it was released a couple of years ago. I haven't ever revisited it, and I didn't think it needed a sequel, but I was more than happy to get to Smile 2 whenever the opportunity arose. It took a while, but the opportunity finally arose.

Naomi Scott plays Skye Riley, a pop star about to embark on a major world tour after some time spent recovering from some major troubles (including a car crash that left her scarred, but lucky to be alive). Things start to get tricky when she ends up as the next in a chain of people who have all been targeted by the demonic entity that drives people insane as they see sinister smiles everywhere.

With Parker Finn back for the writing and directing duties, and making use of one main character from the last film to create a solid continuity leading into this story, this should have been a way to take things in some interesting and creative directions. Sadly, Finn seems more interested in ensuring that there's a bottle of Voss water visible in every main sequence. I wish I was joking. Take a shot of your preferred strong spirit of choice every time someone grabs or drinks a Voss and you will be lapsing into unconsciousness by the halfway point, easily. Are there some good moments here? Yes, but there aren't enough of them to warrant the lengthy runtime, considering how many other moments are disappointingly predictable and staid.

A couple of impressive death scenes will make most viewers jump and wince, and there's a sequence that has a large group of people performing an evil and twisted riff on a dance routine shown much earlier in the movie, but this thing clocks in at 127-minutes. That's too long, especially when the third act feels far too close to the third act of the first film.

Scott makes it watchable though. She's absolutely fantastic for every minute of her screentime, convincing as a pop superstar, and just as convincing when offstage and struggling to keep her celebrity responsibilities at bay as she becomes more vulnerable and scared. Rosemarie DeWitt is also very good, playing her mother/manager, and there are solid performances from Miles Gutierrez-Riley, Lukas Gage, Dylan Gelula, and Peter Jacobson.

This should have been something special. It should have been wild, it should have been a big step up from the original, and it should have left you feeling that Finn had a clear reason, aside from money, to revisit this territory. Sadly, it's just toothless. And that's not usually a good thing for any smile.

4/10

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Smile (2022)

On the one hand, Smile is a solid and unnerving horror movie with some impressive imagery that was used well in a viral marketing campaign. On the other hand, it’s an all-too-familiar deadly curse tale that disappointingly had one or two key visuals revealed in the trailer. I like it, and it walks a tightrope over some very dangerous territory, but it comes very close to complete failure thanks to a number of key issues.

Sosie Bacon plays Rose Cotter, a psychiatrist who is traumatized when a patient commits suicide in from of her. That death turns out to be another in a long line of connected violent ends, with each witness to such an event then going on to take their own life within about a week. Quickly becoming paranoid and disturbed, Rose tries to get to the bottom of the mystery, helped by a friendly cop/ex-boyfriend named Joel (Kyle Gallner). Are people somehow passing along a mental health issue, or is there something more powerful at work?

Written and directed by Parker Finn, Smile is not a horror movie to choose when you want uncomplicated and fun entertainment. Considering the subject matter at the heart of it, viewers should be wary of selecting it as a viewing choice if they have recently lost someone to suicide. Finn seems to give himself an out though, an explanation for events that eventually leads us from the medical to the supernatural, but there remains an ambiguity throughout that many might not appreciate. I don’t think it’s intentional, it is the nature of the material, but some will find this much darker and more disturbing than others, for reasons not necessarily intended by Finn. Consider yourselves duly warned.

Unfortunately, having tried to carefully navigate through a foundation so fraught with danger, Finn doesn’t do nearly enough with his central concept. The few good scares, and some are really good, are spaced out through a runtime of nearly two hours, but every main sequence could have had so much more packed into it. Just think of the many ways a smile, or being told to smile, could twisted and turned into something menacing and scary. Finn isn’t interested in anything beyond one or two main ideas though, sadly, so you don’t get any extra tension or surprises.

What you also don’t get is a good lead. Bacon is okay in her role, but she doesn’t feel as watchable or compelling as at least a dozen other actresses I could make right now. That wouldn’t be so bad if the whole film didn’t rest on her shoulders, but it pretty much does. Gallner is always good to see, and does well with his fairly small amount of screentime, and the likes of Jessie T. Usher, Robin Weigert, Caitlin Stasey, Gillian Zinser, and Kal Penn are all wasted to varying degrees, many not given nearly enough time to show us more of their character than the tropes required by the script.

There ARE quite a few good moments though, and the strength of the central concept makes up for a lot. There’s also some design work in the third act that had me thinking of Junji Ito (which is never a bad thing). The good outweighs the bad, even if the film never comes close to reaching full potential, and I recommend it to horror fans who don’t mind the occasional interaction with slick mainstream fare.

7/10

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