Smile 2 Review

Park Finn's 2022 film Smile had a semi-humanoid monster that fed on trauma, and drove its hosts to the edge of insanity till they killed themselves in grotesque ways in front of a witness. For the final act, their faces were plastered with a twisted grin. Smile was a smash success, elevated by Finn's slow, festering screenplay. In Smile 2, he gets darker, deeper and more nihilistic.

Naomi Scott plays Skye Riley, a pop-star returning to the stage after a year-long hiatus following a car accident that kills her boyfriend (Ray Nicholson) and leaves her with a long scar on her torso. Skye is a troubled figure - recovering drug-addict, alone, estranged from her best friend Gemma (Dylan Gelula), and under pressure from her momager (Rosemarie DeWitt) and record label to get back in the game for a world tour. But a week from her show, she gets "infected" by a friend (Lukas Gage of White Lotus fame who reprises his acting niche as a druggie). Racked with self-hatred and body dysmorphia, Skye becomes the perfect "skin" for the monster to live in.

Finn has us at the edge of our seats with a pop-star protagonist. Her being constantly in the public eye - at dance rehearsals, fan meet-and-greets, at a charity event - as she gets increasingly unhinged by the hallucinations, heightens the drama. Her eeriest visions come to her in her cavernous, dark apartment where she spends her time in a dazed state, experiencing time collapse, terrified of everything. One of the film's most iconic sequences shows a group of backup dancers materializing in Skye's walk-in closet, with creepy smiles plastered on their faces as they slowly inch towards her in dance movements.

There are surprisingly few jump scares - instead, an atmosphere of suspicion and dread suffuses the Skye-centric screenplay with Charlie Sarroff's incredibly poised camerawork. The audience shares Skye's perspective, experiencing her bewilderment as her reality continuously reshapes itself, in a time distortion like the mind of someone with dementia. Is the best friend she's reconciled with, now asleep beside her, real, or just another planted vision? And what of the man with a bizarre plan to rid her of the metaphysical monster - can he be trusted, or is he part of the nightmare? By the end, there are no handholds left - just a vertical climb toward an unreachable climax, with characters falling away and no resolution in sight.

Naomi Scott is a sensation and a true horror discovery. There is "not a single f**king moment of happiness", Skye tells an aghast audience as she goes off-script at a charity event - and it is true. Skye cycles through raw paranoia, deep insecurity, self-loathing, and overwhelming sadness, each emotion erupting from Scott with vein-popping intensity. Scott's performance is relentless, gripping, and impossible to look away from.

(Side note: As the second movie this year with a prominent popstar character, Riley gives Lady Raven from M Night Shyamalan's Trap a run for her money when it comes to her songs and stage-game).

Smile 2 doesn't offer many new details about the supernatural entity from the Sosie Bacon-led original. Instead, it ramps up the intensity, delivering a more high-stakes, nerve-wracking experience. Like real trauma, the film refuses to provide neat resolutions or closure, dragging us deeper into its unsettling grasp and revealing the endless, cyclical nature of pain. It ends on a chilling note for what's sure to be an even more devastating sequel.