Smile 2 review – this is going to ruin the tour

The prob­lem with hor­ror sequels is that they inevitably require some hefty ante-upping. This can be tricky when you’ve already announced your­self in quite mem­o­rable fash­ion, such is the quandary fac­ing Park­er Finn, whose fea­ture debut Smile made a stag­ger­ing $200 mil­lion return on invest­ment for Para­mount back in 2022. A fol­low-up was inevitable – but how does a film­mak­er rid­ing high on that lev­el of suc­cess tack­le the sopho­more slump?

Finn picks up right where he left off, with police offi­cer Joel (Kyle Gall­ner) now attempt­ing to rid him­self of the smile curse – which caus­es vic­tims to kill them­selves in vio­lent fash­ion – after con­tract­ing it from his ex-girl­friend at the end of the pre­vi­ous film. As in the orig­i­nal film, if Joel wants to sur­vive, he must find a way to pass the curse on to some­one else, and the action kicks off in an even blood­i­er fash­ion than its pre­de­ces­sor as Finn ups the ante on a grand scale.

We fol­low a chain of unfor­tu­nate events all the way to pop singer Skye Riley (Nao­mi Scott), who’s on a redemp­tive PR offen­sive fol­low­ing the car crash that killed her boyfriend Paul (Ray ​‘Son of Jack’ Nichol­son). She mourn­ful­ly bares her soul on Drew Barrymore’s chat show, agrees to play nice with her record label’s requests, and qui­et­ly agrees to meet her ador­ing fans even though she’s still deal­ing with the lit­er­al and fig­u­ra­tive scars from her acci­dent. It’s hard to think of a more incon­ve­nient time for a vio­lent sui­cide demon to enter your life.

Yet enter her life the demon does after Skye wit­ness­es the death of her drug deal­er. She starts to expe­ri­ence vio­lent, dis­turb­ing visions of smil­ing stalk­ers (which her team seem remark­ably unfazed by, con­sid­er­ing she’s sup­posed to be a world-famous pop star) and her tour prep is suit­ably derailed. This is the main prob­lem with Smile 2, as it quick­ly becomes repet­i­tive to see Skye freak out over anoth­er delu­sion, and she’s remark­ably inert when it comes to doing any­thing about them. Con­sid­er­ing there is already an exist­ing amount of lore, it becomes repet­i­tive to see Skye going through a vari­a­tion of the first film’s events, with no real pro­gres­sion until the film’s final third when Skye final­ly decides to answer the cryp­tic text mes­sages she’s been receiving.

But if you’re look­ing for log­ic in a film where the vil­lain is a fleshy meat pup­pet called ​‘The Mon­stros­i­ty’ you might be beyond help. Instead, Smile 2 – like Smile – is con­cerned with keep­ing the audi­ence squirm­ing in their seats, through gory kills and effec­tive jump scares. It’s sort of about trau­ma, with flash­backs demon­strat­ing the hor­rif­ic crash that Skye expe­ri­enced the year pre­vi­ous, but – like Smile – isn’t over­ly inter­est­ed in its themes or mean­ing. Finn seems aware that his audi­ence most­ly wants to be enter­tained, rea­son be damned, and seems to lean into the oppor­tu­ni­ties pre­sent­ed for car­toon lev­els of vio­lence and crunchy dialogue.

It’s all excep­tion­al­ly sil­ly, and fans of the first film might find the first hour lit­tle more than a rehash of Smile, but there’s still some­thing admirable about Park­er Finn’s gus­to. A scrap of lore about The Mon­stros­i­ty emerges in the third act, but oth­er­wise, pre­cious lit­tle is done to ​‘world build’ – an impulse that’s anti­thet­i­cal to the po-faced hor­ror fran­chise instal­ments of recent years that can’t help but wrap them­selves in lore at the expense of fun.

One thing that did prove dis­tract­ing how­ev­er was the incred­i­ble prod­uct place­ment deal that Voss Water secured for this film – there are about ten dif­fer­ent shots of some­one either hold­ing or drink­ing the ​“arti­sanal water” with­in Smile 2’s two-hour run time. It’s even a key point of Skye’s char­ac­ter that she drinks a lot of water at the rec­om­men­da­tion of her drug reha­bil­i­ta­tion advi­sor. This ulti­mate­ly doesn’t amount to any­thing with­in the film’s plot, but it was too laugh­ably con­spic­u­ous to not men­tion – and per­haps that’s anoth­er part of Smile 2’s goofy appeal, along­side the wacky use of upside cam­eras, the janky giant mon­ster mar­i­onette and a wil­ful­ly dis­cor­dant score. It’s so, so sil­ly, but it sure is fun.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

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