SMILE 2 (2024)
Starring Naomi Scott, Rosemarie DeWitt, Lukas Gage, Miles Gutierrez-Riley, Peter Jacobson, Ray Nicholson, Dylan Gelula, Raúl Castillo, Kyle Gallner, Daphne Zelle, Iván Carlo, Delphi Harrington, Zebedee Row, Micaela Lamas, Anthony Berini, Jon Seeber, David Peter White and Drew Barrymore.
Screenplay by Parker Finn.
Directed by Parker Finn.
Distributed by Paramount Pictures. 127 minutes. Rated R.
There are lots of scary things that go bump in the night which inspire nightmares and scary movies. However, the Smile movies have hit upon a… umm… novel horror technique.
As you may have guessed by the title, it is smiling.
Yeah, yeah, I know, smiling is not supposed to be scary. But what if it is? What if people suddenly start smiling at the potential victim very aggressively, almost manically? Could that be a clue to impending doom?
According to this high-concept series, it can be. The basic idea of the Smile movies isn’t all that far removed from The Ring movies. An evil demon mentally and physically tortures someone over a five- or so-day period, appearing as many smiling people that no one else can see and eventually entering their subconscious and making them survive some violent and embarrassing experiences so that everyone in the person’s life thinks they are crazy – including the victim her (or him) self.
Much of this mental torture is just in their minds though, so this sort of lowers the suspense factor. Eventually the demon tortures the poor person so much that it is able to enter their subconscious, turning them into the horrifically smiling person, and get them to kill themselves. However, they must do it in front of a witness, so the demon can jump over and start to torment the survivor. (There is apparently a slight loophole in which the victim can get away by killing someone else rather than themselves, but this idea was explored more in the first film.)
So, what can we say? The story makes little to no sense. Many of the scare scenes turn out to be fake outs. But, if you buy into the world of Smile, it does have some real significant scares.
The unlucky center of this physical and mental attack is Skye Riley (Naomi Scott), a superstar pop singer who has spent the past year recovering from an automobile accident that killed her famous actor boyfriend, as well as trying to detox from some serious alcohol and drug habits.
She drops in on an old school friend turned dealer to get some Vicodin (she claims she is off the drugs, but this is for her back, which was badly injured in the crash). After a brief, confounding conversation, the guy grabs a weight and smashes his own face in with it, all the while giving that eerie smile.
Quickly Skye is dealing with lots of scary and inexplicable things going on around her, trying to keep her sanity while her mom is pressuring her to get ready for a big international tour.
The single most confounding thing about Smile 2 is simply this – what is a really good actress like indie darling Rosemarie DeWitt doing in this movie? Is this where the multi-award nominated actress – long a staple of film, television and stage – is in her career path now, playing the slightly obnoxious and driven mother of the lead character? DeWitt also has to perform an extremely violent possible death scene, although we are not completely certain if the attack is supposed to be real or a hallucination. I mean, I get it, I suppose. You take the roles that are offered you, particularly if you are a woman actor of a certain age (DeWitt is 52) – but seeing her here seems like a real waste of talent. Most anyone could have played her role, and this is one of the rare occasions where you just feel that DeWitt is just here to collect a paycheck.
Of course, it’s all about the money. When the first Smile movie became a surprise hit, two years ago, it was almost inevitable that they would make a sequel. (I’ll give them credit for waiting two years if this were a Blumhouse film it would probably only have been a year.) Of course – spoiler alert for the first film – the main character, a psychologist played by Sosie Bacon (daughter of Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick) died in the first film, and most of the rest of the cast (like Kal Penn and Kyle Gallner) really don’t play into this new story – although Gallner does appear again briefly in the violent prologue of the new film.
Is there really a reason for Smile 2 to exist? Probably not. But is it a decently spooky horror film that is worth giving a look if it comes om cable or streaming? Sure, why not? If you don’t expect too much from Smile 2 and instead just give yourself in to its twisted logic, it does make for a decent enough fright film. I’m just not sure there is any real reason for there to eventually be a Smile 3, although you know it will be coming down the pike in a couple of years.
Jay S. Jacobs
Copyright ©2024 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: October 16, 2024.
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