Parker Finn’s Smile 2 escalates the tension from the first film and manages to recapture the same level of terrifying dread consistently throughout the runtime. Its decision to look from a mental health perspective to someone grappling with the consequences of fame sees a Taylor Swift-stand-in as the protagonist, Naomi Scott’s pop sensation Skye Riley. With the caveat of global fame comes expected success, everyone knows her, and the haunted demons that run over her make her an ideal target for the demonic creature that makes up the smile. Part of what makes Smile 2 so unnerving is that there is little lore for the monster; and no victim has survived it, so all we know is its bloody path of innocent lives. Skye is an easy target: her dark past, her manipulative record label banking on a tour that can’t be backed out of – and the possibilities for its rewards are endless.
The jump scares that the film uses comes a bit too thick and fast to make the best truly effective; as you know it’s coming after a certain point, especially when they were all featured in the trailer, which gave away way too much of the film. What’s perhaps more interesting is the study of paranoia and the ‘everyone’s out to get me’ attitude that comes at the height of fame, positioned opposite Lady Raven in Trap character makes fame a frightening prospect. Even before the smile Skye faces obsessive fans, stalkers and social media personalities. It gets the perspective of a pop star and the unrelenting tour demands so well no wonder The Last Dinner Party cancelled a slew of their London dates, and Chappell Roan is struggling with her rapid rise to fame. With the rapid rise of stan culture we’re about to see an explosion of horror films dealing with the music industry; and with these two films at the forefront, we’re in good hands.
The formula feels a bit too familiar to the first film and doesn’t try to shake things up enough, but its mastery of hallucinations and the ability to create them in a similar way to the Weeping Angels in Doctor Who makes this a frightening prospect, the location settings feeling expertly crafted to give an excess sense of false security and emptiness. Scott has been a solid name delivering reliable performance after reliable performance in franchises and has been able to hone her craft; the facial expressions, the commitment to the terror, the overwhelming sense of fear and dread that her character leaves on the table – coupled with the clever journey of sobriety symbolised by an urge to drink water to calm down – everything feels a bit blunt, heavy handed and rather obvious, at the same time not quite as deranged as The Substance, for example, which tackles similar themes and even has a similar ending – but what separates it from that is its sense of overwhelming mass dread. The growing confidence Parker Finn has in the directors chair helps too, able to craft a pop video advertisement for his skills and capture the concert setting superbly.
Literal demons are balanced with metaphorical ones for a killer structure that allows Riley no respite from the horrors her character must endure, switching one for another at every act. The audience jumps at every turn, the heavily-marketed sensation playing in its favour. It plays with mind games at every turn – surpassing the original by building on its confidence. It’s a bigger, better and more confident second outing that leaves the prospect of the third film quite frankly, even more daunting. I did think the ending could’ve been perhaps been handled better and been more rewarding for its lead character; but then, with a sense of overwhelming dread at every turn – what more do you need to expect? There are few major franchise films capable of creating such an attitude of no-hope; not since perhaps Frank Darabont’s The Mist.
