Six days after the first film, the titular entity has a new target:
Pop star Skye Riley (Naomi Scott).
I have never really boiled down what the experience is when I lock into a movie.
I think I am going to call it the Jolt.
It is like a circuit is made between something on screen and my brain that pulls me in. The movie does not even have to be great. It just has something - a scene or an idea - that I connect to on an elemental level.
Smile 2 is the first time I have felt the jolt in a long time.
When the title card ‘Six days later’ appeared onscreen, I realised I could not remember anything about the story from Smile.
I was not the biggest fan of Smile. I liked it but it felt like it had one move that became a little repetitive the longer it went on.
I have not seen it since. After Part Deux, I’m keen to go back.
Smile 2 is great. Not a great movie - but it feels more ambitious and bigger.
We get multiple, complicated setpieces which are clearly staged to maximise the jump scares and the darkly comic punchlines.
Despite its big budget, one thing I give both Smile films credit for is how unsafe they feel. I have complicated feelings leaving the theatre but I also felt exhilarated.
I will watch this movie again. I will be there day one for Smile 3.
This movie is proof that nothing has to work a hundred percent to get into your brain and live there.
It helps that the film is anchored by a great performance.
Playing a character who is already wrestling with demons, Naomi Scott is a great anchor.
I have seen her pop up in a few things, but this movie rises and falls on her.
When the smile starts popping up, she is already trapped in her own hell.
The events of Smile 2 are almost too much - this poor woman is already having to juggle with so much. And now this?
When we meet her, she is dealing with multiple levels of trauma - the accident that killed her partner; the scars she is ashamed of; her addictions; her broken relationships; and finally the machinery of capitalism, embodied by the music industry that treats her like a machine.
Scott is compelling and empathetic. She goes big in certain points, but she always feels grounded. It would be easy to make her come off as out of touch, but the film is so keyed into the claustrophobia of her life.
She is surrounded by a hundred people holding on her every whim, but she has no control over anything. Skye’s story is clearly meant to evoke that of past musical stars, like Elvis or Whitney Houston, who were unable to deal with addictions and health problems because there was a community of people dependent on them for their own financial benefit.
The film is compelling - and pulls out a final twist that
I left elated, but also disconcerted.
It is a familiar convention of the genre that order is not restored.
How many horror movies end with a final upset? An unkillable villain or a main character making one choice that dooms them?
We spend so much time with Skye. The horror of her real life is so well-realised, the fact that Smile is also involved feels mean spirited.
I appreciated the expansion of scope, and the way the film does not get lost in the scale. We are still firmly anchored to one character’s point of view, questioning everything we see and hear.
But as the credits roll, the film’s black out feels less like a dark joke and more like an inevitability.
Skye was never going to escape. If the events of Smile 2 had not happened, would she end up in the same place?
At points, the infection feels like a catalyst - the character forced to confront her trauma. And past that, the person she used to be.
It feels like she has a chance to get her life back. And then…
The film’s ending is a gut punch - a visceral, mean rug pull that shows there is no escape.
But within the context of the story, of the character and everything sh what’s had to deal with?
Is it just callous? Or a metaphor for the characters’ demons overcoming her?
How do I feel about it?
It does not matter. It is great to leave a mainstream movie feeling like that.
I will be thinking about Smile 2 way more than I thought about its predecessor.
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