Smile 2 is the sequel to Smile.
The first Smile was a hit thanks to that killer shot from its trailer where a girl’s head falls sideways and dangles from a rubbery neck upside down — smiling, of course.
The first Smile stared Sosie Bacon’s mole. Smile 2 stars Naomi Scott (Power Rangers and that Charlie’s Angels movie no one watched).
Parker Finn returns to write and direct.
Spoilers will happen…
Smile 2
Smile 2 starts off decently enough. It is almost a James Bond kind of opening, a little self-contained sequence that sets things off. A character from the first film dons a mask and raids a drug house. Suffice it to say, things go badly.
The movie then branches out into Scott’s story. Smile 2 opts for a story tangent that is intriguing. Usually, horror movie protagonists are regular joes: teenagers, middle-class couples, travelers and the like. In this case, Scott plays a pop star diva. Think Lady Gaga, Britney Spears and/or Taylor Swift.
This enables us to see how a famous person deals with the Smile Curse. For those in the dark, the Smile Curse is thus: an entity that infects a person’s mind and makes them see apparitions of smiling people. If a person sees someone with the Smile Curse die, they are then cursed.
In this case, Scott sees an infected person from the opening die. To this point, Smile 2 is somewhat working. It is even delivering a surprising bit of gore.
If You Got to Go, Go With a Smile 2
Smile 2 reviews are mostly positive. A good number of them single out Scott’s performance as she plays a woman driven to madness. Are these kudos deserved?
Not really…with a caveat. Smile 2 has an extremely beefy runtime for a horror film — 128 minutes. Scott spends most of that time at an 11 on a scale from 1 to 10 when it comes to stressed. Sure, she brings it, but it gets tiring to watch because no real ramping-up exists in her performance.
This is not Scott’s fault. This is writer/director Finn’s fault. One has to map these kinds of movies out, so the character goes from 1 to 11 gradually.
This is part of a common problem in today’s films. Characters are overly emotional. They are always crying, screaming, and twisting their faces up in anguish while yelling the F word.
Look to Jaws for inspiration. Roy Scheider’s character is in an extremely stressful situation. He is the sheriff of a town where people are getting killed by a shark. Everyone is against him. Brody is scared. He is trying to be a husband/father in between everything. He goes out on a boat to hunt the shark, which is totally out of his element, and how many times do you see Scheider take it to 11?
Pretty much never, and it is a performance that will live on for as long as movies live.
As for the F word, a good rule of thumb is this… Are you Quentin Tarantino? Are you 1980s Eddie Murphy? Do you go by the name of Shane Black? If the answer to any of those questions is no, then you likely don’t have the talent for copious use of the F word. Think of a different way to express stress.
Smile 2, You’re On Candid Camera
The purpose of a sequel is to make money — I mean, build on the original. Does Smile 2 build on the mythology of Smile?
If you wonder if the Smile Entity could use a smartphone, the answer is, yes. If you wondered if the Smile Entity can produce multiple apparitions, the answer is also, yes. This is probably the most effective scene in the movie. Scott is in her apartment, besieged by a group of Smile Entities who only move when she looks away…until they stop doing that and move whenever they want.
An element of possession is also introduced, in that the Smile Entity can fool the person it infects into performing actions. Meanwhile, a possible cure is also brought up, but it is unclear if it is real or not. The cure is essentially how Michael J. Fox tried to stop Johnny Bartlett in The Frighteners. If an infected person sits in a freezer and dies of a stopped heart, the Smile Entity might leave. Then the person can be resuscitated and go about their life, de-cursed.
Throughout all of this, how are the scares since Smile 2 is a horror movie? Finn creates a feeling of unease here and there that works in the beginning. Then he goes full into jump scare mode.
A Wink and a Smile 2
The most interesting part of Smile 2 is the ending, which should have come about thirty minutes sooner than it did. Finn holds the camera on a screaming audience and said this about it:
What I love about the ending of this film is that I wanted to create this meta-feeling moment, where the audience in the arena is staring through the screen at the audience in the movie theater. I wanted to raise the question: Did we do this to Skye? By us coming back for a Smile 2, have we done this to her? It’s all intriguing to me, this idea of ‘are we complicit in this?
The answer is probably not that deep. Here is another take: the movie establishes that whoever sees a person with the Smile Curse die becomes cursed. This means all those audience members are now cursed. From a meta-standpoint, this means viewers are cursed by bad movies…
Yet, one doesn’t need to be too hard on Smile 2. This is not The Exorcist or even The Lost Boys. It is a movie for teenagers to squeal at, and maybe it will serve as a gateway to an interest in better films. Plus, Finn has a good grasp of the financials. Smile 2 was a $28-million movie and brought in $138 million. That’s not as good as the first ($217 million on a $17-million budget), but it still puts a smile on a producer’s face and guarantees a Smile 3.
But will Smile 2 put a smile on your face? Maybe a polite one for the sake of being nice.
