Overview

“Smile 2” follows director Parker Finn’s successful horror film debut “Smile” in a stunning continuation of the series with Paramount Pictures. Parker Finn didn’t let viewers down with his newest presentation, which follows fictional pop star Skye Riley, played by Naomi Scott, as she embarks on her new world tour and struggles to sustain her own sanity.

What to Expect

This film was crafted to evoke a visceral reaction due to your phobias and heighten your awareness of potential smile murderers. This movie makes you writhe and cringe out of your seat at the sight of all the intentionally hand-picked gore. The way Parker Finn crafted most of the visual composition of the film makes the viewer feel claustrophobic or involved in the scene with the use of close-ups. He utilizes every sense of the human body to make the viewer uncomfortable and anxious as if they were actually in the scene. For example, the use of base sound design to heighten your anxiety in scary scenes, the use of grotesque gore and targeting specific phobias on the human body, the detail of a scene’s environment like in Louie’s disgusting apartment, and how bad it must smell. And lastly the psychological manipulation of the smile curse and how it does a number on the victim’s mental health in order to drive them completely insane.

Sound Design

The sound design curated by director Parker Finn really sets the tone and feeling for the film. The excessive use of base to signify the demonic switch between a real person and the smiling demon adds such a good element of surprise, as well as making the jumpscares in the movie more significant and memorable. In the opening sequence we watch as the current carrier of the smile demon, Joel from the last movie, is frantically trying to find a loophole in the curse by giving the curse to a known criminal and then killing him in the process to end the curse. The way Finn follows this character through the trap house as he plays damage control against these angry criminals who just witnessed this guy murder two of their main guys. Loud intense music including huge bass fills this scene and makes the viewer subconsciously more stressed watching the chase. Such a brilliant and exciting way to start this thriller of a movie.

Themes/Symbols

This movie is jam-packed with themes and ideas of how you can scare someone in every single way possible. Some things that may trigger people is the use of dread, death, insanity, abuse, corrupt industry, and especially paranoia. A round of applause for Naomi Scott on her amazing performance as Skye, she really portrays these emotions so well and makes the fictional artist she plays believable. She really drags you into this world and gets you invested in her problems. 

Another performance that shined in this movie is the chilling Paul Hudson, Skye’s late boyfriend, played by Oscar winner Jack Nicholson’s son, Ray Nicholson. His sinister smile in the speech scene is eerily reminiscent of his father’s famous Kubrick stare in Stanley Kubrick’s “The Shining”. The constant anxiety-ridden tone of the film is set by the rapid switching between dream and reality when it comes to Skye seeing stuff that makes her crazy. The viewer is constantly asking themselves, “Is this even real?” and pulling their hair out due to the stress over this lovely main character getting potentially brutally murdered. 

One final big theme that stood out to me was the spectacle of this pop singer’s troubled past aligning with this paranormal smile demon curse, resulting in this chaotic chain of plot points leading to the grand grotesque finale. The way Parker Finn makes the struggles of dealing with the evil sides of being a celebrity like fighting addiction problems, battling mental health, an abusive family using you for money, and not caring about your feelings perfectly represents a realistic modern pop artist’s life struggles and how it fits this story idea perfectly.

Favorite Moments

Some of my personal favorite parts of the movie were the Louie apartment scene, the creepy fan scene, and the whole sequence of Skye waking up in the hospital. Specifically with the Louie scene, the absolute nightmare of a situation is very well directed as it depicts this psycho Louie as an unpredictable loose cannon on drugs. It is terrifying when he carries out the smile demon’s wishes in front of Skye, then passes the curse to her. The gut-wrenching gore made the whole theater look away as some scenes just know how to make a human wince at the sight of such body horror. Like when Skye is forced to stab her neck with a huge thick needle or when she is rehearsing and breaks her ankle. 

This fever dream of a story will rank high on my movie rating scale as this first-time theater watch was extremely enjoyable and left me shaken walking out and into my dark and scary car. Smile 2 scores a 5 out of 5 for a horror film in 2024 as it hits on all cylinders for what makes a true timeless Halloween classic with sound design, plot, tone, and scariness. I truly believe nothing else in the horror genre will top it this year, and this sequel exceeds the first in terms of quality.