THE FOLLOWING REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS OF THE DISCUSSED FILM. READERS DISCRETION IS ADVISED.
We all know how easy it is to be exposed to trauma, but it’s easier to pass it on.
PLOT
Smile 2 takes place six days after the events of the first film. With Rose Cotton being a victim to a smiling entity that targets victims of past trauma to commit suicide, police officer Joel is next in line and tries passing it on by killing a criminal and passing it on to another as a witness. It backfires when both die and another deal named Lewis (Lukas Gage) unintentionally becomes a bystander witness. When Joel tries to retreat from others related to the criminals he killed, he gets ran over by a passing truck. Another week goes by and Lewis dies via possessed suicide as well by the entity. The witness ends up being pop artist Skye Riley, an old school friend who has been recovering from substance abuse after surviving a car crash involving her and her boyfriend, actor Paul Hudson. Flashbacks confirm they were severely intoxicated at the time and Skye was the one who caused when intentionally steering the wheel during an intense argument. As a result, she hasn’t spoken to her close friend Gemma and not only her assistant Joshua, but also her mother Elizabeth who is acting as her manager, have been supervising her to stay off drugs. She visited Lewis in the first place to score Vicodin for the sake of back pains she’s still coping with due to the accident. As he tried to warn her of the week he’s experienced, the possession took full effect and he takes his life by smashing his face with a barbell plate, and the entity leaves his body with the signature cunning smile. Skye would vomit in shock of what she witnessed, but leaves without alerting anyone for the sake of staying out of trouble. As her cursed week takes affect, she starts seeing hallucinations of people sharing the same smile. Although she would find reconciliation with Gemma, her mental health would only continue to deteriorate with the hallucinations ongoing. It would be so bad to the point where she would fail to grasp reality during a fundraiser hosted by her music executive Darius (Raúl Castillo). When a teleprompter malfunctions, she’d give an impromptu speech that success hasn’t improved her life. The hallucination takes full effect when seeing not only Paul’s name on the prompter, but also the entity pretending to be him with the same smile. Skye would panic so severely that she’d accidentally injure an elderly host of the fundraiser. Having gotten texts from an unknown messenger, she agrees to meet him in person. At a public bar, the man turns out to be an ER nurse named Morris who reveals he’s been studying the entity for years due to his brother being one of the victims long before Joel & Rose. He theorizes thee entity is parasitic and it might die if there is no host to consume and pass on to. He pitches to stop her heart for at least 9 minutes before resuscitating her back to life. Skye doesn’t decide yet as she quickly leaves to avoid being spotted by bar goers. When returning to her apartment, she gets attacked by the entity that takes the form of her backup dancers. As the encounter causes her to black out, she’d later wake up in a retreat orchestrated by Elizabeth who wants to recover in time for the tour, knowing she won’t financially recover if she cancels. When both women argue, Skye suspects the entity to be disguised as her mom and only after stabbing her with glass does she realize she did it for real. She would then leave by force and hijack a car with Gemma as company. But as she drives to rendezvous with Morris, she discovers the entity has also been pretending to be her friend as the real Gemma barely calls her a week after she thought to have reconnected. She does meet Morris at an abandoned restaurant and the latter agrees to stop her heart in a walk-in freezer to prevent brain damage when her heart stops. When isolated though, the entity attacks again but the artist fends herself long enough to use the syringe on herself. However, in the disguise of her last self from the accident, the entity mockingly affirms she’s still not in control. Riley then finds herself in the middle of a concert where her mom is alive and well with Darius & Joshua, confirming to have the biggest hallucination since the apartment blackout. The film ends with Skye fully succumbing to possession when taking her life by stabbing her face with a microphone, traumatizing everyone in attendance, leaving the signature smile in the process.
THOUGHTS
Writer/Director Parker Finn knew there were high expectations to make an excellent horror sequel as it is always challenging to match or surpass the quality of the predecessor. With all the pressure at hand, he basically forged a diamond because that is how impressively this one came to be. He fools us with a clever cold open having us think we’ll follow what Kyle Gallner’s Joel, only to give us a whole new spin in how mentally consuming trauma can be to people with a new lead. With the sharpest combo of editing & cinematography, you feel all the claustrophobia you’re supposed to feel when the smiling entity is present. Knowing its methods after going through the first movie, you know things aren’t gonna go to plan for the final girl, but the new tricks it had in mind were far more surprising. Even with the possibility it could be defeated, it still found a way to be dominant and pass the cycle in an exponential manner. We already know what it looks like in its practical form and we could’ve expected to see it throughout, but the fact it stuck to its own rule by making us wait for a graphic finale was genius. As we waited, every other actor who had to do the cunning smile delivered in giving me chills. Whether it was Ray Nicholson who also played the troubled Paul Hudson, or Mila Falkof who played a random young fan that may or not have been genuinely smiling when present. Don’t get me started with Trevor Newlin either because he succeeded in making my skin crawl as an obsessive fan, a situation that seems to happen far too often to celebrities. Hell, even I was fooled with how Gemma was presented. Dylan Gelula really had me convinced she was making a forgiving friend until the layer was peeled that she was hesitant the whole time and we were just seeing the entity manipulate what Skye thought she was experiencing. Again, this movie succeeds in saying it is best to confront your trauma sooner because hiding in a facade of what would be mistaken as happiness only sets up downfall. Sadly, this is the case for Skye herself who is fantastically played by Naomi Scott. The marketing for this film pays off big time with her making an actual music EP as the character and does actual impressive choreographed dances to prepare for the fictional tour that is supposed to save her career. Her trauma appears far more worse than what Rose went through because she intentionally killed someone out of anger and has to live with it. She doesn’t want to put up with the consequences because she didn’t think she could be forgiven. Even though no one knows, it doesn’t change the fact there are people that’ll always care about her no matter how many mistakes she’ll make. Joshua may be a paid assistant that takes care of her as part of his job, but actor Miles Gutierrez-Riley makes it clear his sympathy is genuine no matter how much of a punching bag Skye will use him as. And on the other hand, Rosemarie DeWitt has to make Elizabeth an over-bearing figure because she’s afraid to lose her daughter. Skye always knew that, but never wanted to hear it because her career was already exhausting her to begin with. Apart from her inner circle, an outsider was what was needed to give her hope in being free of such a mental prison she never thought to be part of. We didn’t think there’d be anyone else to know of the entity, which made it the biggest coincidence to be introduced to Morris. In his given time, Peter Jacobson assures us he’s a victim in his own right when losing his brother. He felt the best way to defeat this unusual parasite was with what he knew in his line of work. We don’t know if it would work since the entity had the longest haul of a hallucination with Skye and with thousands of people to be hosted, however that were to be possible, it will be an ultimate challenge for anyone to survive what the artist couldn’t. This sequel undoubtedly succeeds in topping what we’ve seen before, but there are still things that didn’t make sense to me as I sat through it. For starters, why didn’t Joel prepare for customers like Lewis? If he was staking the place out, he should’ve expected him. And hell, it’s trippy he didn’t even the cars pull up. Skye may not be right in the head, but it’s totally on her to not cover her tracks because she’s lucky that decision to not clean the vomit didn’t come back to bite her. Now even if the stalker didn’t invade her apartment like she mistook to have happened, how come she don’t got security outside? That would’ve helped her deduce reality quicker. That confuses me more than not knowing who trashed her dressing room. Lastly, how did she make it to the concert? If she was hallucinating since the apartment blackout, there has to be an explanation on how she pulled it off without anyone noticing she was far from well. Other than that, this sequel still delivers overall. In short, Smile 2 is an excellent horror sequel for topping itself in more ways than one. If you dig the first one, see this now.
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