My intention last week was to put out a whole five days of blog posts, but the way I watched Parker Finn's (Smile, Laura Hasn't Slept) horror sequel Smile 2, meant that it was late Monday evening before I got to the end credits and so couldn't write up the review until this past weekend. I really loved the idea of Smile, but the film was ruined a bit for me by the trailers which showed near enough every scene of horror. I avoided trailers for Smile 2 when that came out, but did lead to me accidentally missing it at the cinema, only getting to see it once it hit streaming services, in this case, Netflix. To give the film the best chance possible, I intended to watch this at night once the sun had set. Being summer here in the UK, the sun didn't set until late enough that I only managed to get 20 minutes on my first attempt, before I was hit with tiredness and went bed. The next attempt the next day was a little better, but again sleep claimed me, this time with 40 minutes left of the 127 minute movie. Finally, on attempt three I finished this!
Smile was a film whose central idea appealed to me far more than the film itself, would that be the case for the sequel? Of course, some unavoidable spoilers for the first film here.
Smile 2 is a direct sequel, picking up six days after the end of the first film, with the sole surviving (though cursed) character meeting their bloody end at the hands of the Smile demon. Witnessing this end is small-time drug dealer Lewis (Lukas Gage - Deadcon, Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse), unknowingly cursed to die after a solid week of increasingly demented and twisted events. Now Lewis just so happens to have quite the famous customer. Skye Riley (Naomi Scott - Aladdin) is a world famous popstar who is on the brink of a huge comeback tour, returning to her career both after a serious car accident a year previously that killed her boyfriend, and her subsequently ending up in a rehab centre for drug addiction. Still suffering some long term effects of her crash, and unable to get anything for the pain the legal way, Skye relies on Lewis for pain killers. Needing some of those, she visits Lewis at his home, unluckily turning up on the last day of his life. Skye now finds herself saddled with the curse, and with her under an enormous amount of pressure due to her tour beginning in a week's time, she initially puts down all the freaky occurrences to stress. Learning quite late what is actually going on with her, she is contacted by a stranger who states he has an idea how to end the Smile curse once and for all.
For the first third of this sequel I was feeling a little deflated, it felt like it was just going through the same motions again, rather than feeling too different. I slowly began to appreciate the differences, especially with the idea of using a world famous character as the protagonist for a curse film (there are enough of these type of films that it is pretty much its own horror sub-genre now). Someone who is unable to go out in public without being recognised, and who certainly can't be seen to be freaking out with so much riding on her comeback tour leads to a fresh dynamic. Mixed in with the traditional horror, is more relatable anxiety around public performances, which the side effects of her curse lead to some really awkward and uncomfortable scenes of her acting insane on stage in front of crowds of people, reacting to grotesque hallucinations that only she can see. These moments were hard to watch, not so much with the scares, but with the awkwardness of it all, I really wanted the ground to open up and swallow her at times!
A lot of the scenes of horror in the first half are Skye noticing creepily smiling people wherever she goes, something that the first film also did. This idea was expanded upon, especially with the amazing mid-film scene that had Skye's entire group of background dancers, all grinning manically, silently and slowly hunting her around her dressing room, moving towards her as a single unit, but only moving whenever Skye is not looking their way - was a great scene!
Like the first film, again, the lead protagonist becomes someone unreliable for the viewer to follow. Both her and the viewers become unable to discern hallucination from reality, more subtly done I felt this time around so that entire sections of the film, and multiple side characters with pivotal roles are suggested to not have actually existed. The destruction of Skye's surface level perfect life unfolds in a Black Mirror type of way, most feeling similar to season 3 episode 'Nosedive', though without the comedy that one had. There is a sense of horror from the popstar irreversibly ruining her life as she struggles with the curse.
Violent deaths are the order of the day here again, with some brutal ones being shown fully on screen. A dementedly smiling Lewis bashing his face in with a large weight looked very gross, with him front and centre during the whole event. Special effects and make-up effects were amazing for these scenes, but when it comes to the Smile demon itself, I had a similar feel of it coming across as a bit artificial looking, having a cartoonish vibe. Not all the violence is shown on screen, with some kill scenes left to the imagination. Those ones work just as well, often due to the reactions of the on-screen character witnessing it.
Smile 2 was a good sequel whose use of a famous character as the lead made this stand apart from other films of this type. Her fame increased the isolation and terror the character faced, restricting her actions and increasing the pressure and stress beyond what a normal person would have had. Riley really is amazing in the lead role, and she was what made a lot of the film work so well. Despite that, this still feels to me like a greater idea on paper than execution. With the way this film inevitably ends (something that I guessed even before I had seen the movie), it opens up any third film to really do something different, so here's hoping.
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