Smile 2 is a different kind of horror movie than the first one. It is bigger, brighter, bolder than the original Smile. This isn’t a bad thing.
In case you missed seeing Smile, a brief recap [see also the Screenopolis review]: Rose Cotter (Sosie Bacon) stars as a psychiatrist who starts to go crazy after a young woman is brought in and she eventually kills herself in front of Rose. It turns out she had been given some kind of “curse.” This curse starts by watching someone with an extreme, humorless smile kill themselves, then the curse is transferred and you start to go crazy until you kill yourself, in front of someone else to make sure the curse passes. No one has been able to survive longer than seven days. There is one possible alternative, and that is to kill someone else in the presence of a third party.
Smile 2 picks up six days after the end of Smile. Joel (Kyle Gallner) is stuck with the curse after witnessing Rose setting herself ablaze in the first movie. He decides that, rather than killing himself, he will opt to kill someone else. [Warning: Spoilers ahead!] He chooses a pair of drug dealers, brothers, who killed a woman and got away with it. Unfortunately, it all backfires on Joel. Both brothers end up dead, which would seem to leave Joel out of luck. Then a junkie, Lewis (Lukas Gage), shows up. He apparently saw enough of the murder to be given the curse; however, Joel doesn’t know this. Kyle soon gets to know a truck on unpleasant terms.
We meet Skye Riley (Naomi Scott) via an appearance on The Drew Barrymore Show. Skye is a major pop star, who is making a comeback. A year ago, while messed up on cocaine and alcohol, she and her boyfriend got in a horrible car accident, killing him immediately and badly injuring Skye. In the last year, she got clean and is mostly healed. She still gets pain in her back, and takes Vicodin to get through. Unfortunately, no doctor will prescribe her Vicodin because of her history of substance abuse. So she has to get her drugs from junkies like Lewis.
While visiting Lewis, he seems insane, even for all the cocaine he has snorted. He eventually ends his curse by staring at Skye with a creepy smile, then very improperly doing reps with a weight. And so, the curse is passed onto Skye.
Things start off slow for Skye. She randomly sees people with creepy smiles, and she sees Lewis, with his smashed face, everywhere. Then her visions start to get insane. She thinks a stalker is in her apartment; she keeps having flashbacks to the car accident. Things get worse and her visions become more extreme.
While Smile was quietly scary, Smile 2 is loud and chaotic. This is not a bad thing. Director Parker Finn obviously got a lot more money to make this film. The main character here is a rock star; the main character in the first film is a psychologist. Right there, you go from a quiet profession to a loud profession. Everything from Skye’s screaming to her music is just louder, just more.
Fair warning: The gore in Smile 2 is heavier and more pronounced than in the first film, including everything from Lewis’s smashed face, with the skin from his jaw dripping off his skeleton, to the bloody remnants of the car accident. There is some intense body horror in the film’s finale, something that is almost laughably big – in a good way. The effects are well-done and do not disappoint.
Naomi Scott is exhaustingly great in this film. Much is asked of her: a lung-scarring amount of screaming; a marathon’s worth of running; and a full Gena Rowlands tribute’s worth of acting crazy. I assume that she does her own singing in this film, and she is great. I could see Naomi Scott as a rock star if this acting thing doesn’t take off.
My one major complaint with the film is that it builds up a considerable quantity of stuff — characters, incidents — in Skye’s head, and it becomes complicated trying to backtrack and figure out what is real, and what isn’t. I am still not sure about a few things, but this didn’t spoil my enjoyment of the film. It is big, brash, and enjoyable. The film ends with a substantial finale, which I won’t spoil here, but which obviously is setting up a great Smile 3.
