Smile 2 review - worthy follow up to runaway hit

No film tackles the knotty topic of inherited mental illness with as much gleeful abandon as Smile. Mental health has been a popular subtext in contemporary horror for the past decade, but Parker Finn's Smile felt refreshing in how unsubtle it was. The premise was a curse that drives you mad with violent hallucinations that eventually force you to kill yourself, passing the curse on to whoever witnesses your death.

But Smile didn’t become a box-office hit because of its sensitive approach to mental health, it was because its many quiet-quiet-LOUD scares were thrillingly effective and because that signature rictus grin was creepy in a delightfully puerile way. 

Finn's follow-up Smile 2 is a heavy dose of more-of-the-same with a few welcomed tweaks. The central character is now popstar Skye Riley (Naomi Scott, pulling off a load-bearing role with ease) who a year ago survived a car crash that killed her boyfriend and is now on the brink of a multi-million dollar comeback tour. It certainly feels like a timely premise for a horror film as the “popstar” has been at the forefront of the public consciousness due to perennial Swift coverage and Chappel Roan recently made headlines speaking candidly about the toxicity of “stan” culture, which is a theme here too. 

In Smile 2 the curse is now a metaphor for addiction rather than depression, but rest assured it is dealt with in a similarly hamfisted way. In a sit-down tell-all interview with Drew Barrymore (played by Drew Barrymore), Skye reveals how it was her drug abuse that led to the car crash. Now sober, she is ready to prove the haters wrong, putting her most convincing smile on for the cameras. Still in pain from a back injury sustained in the crash, she sneaks off to her drug dealer (Lukas Gage) to buy vicodin, since no doctor will prescribe a former addict anything strong enough. This is of course the same drug dealer who in the opening sequence inherits the curse from the last victim of the previous film and in his neon lit apartment, Skye witnesses his gruesome death involving a weight plate.

Soon enough, the curse starts working its dark magic on Skye and the film kicks into gear. The curse familiarly contorts faces into menacing smiles as her hallucinations become more violent and realistic. There are some great scenes here, like the awkward and transactional meet-and-greet featuring a young girl delivering the best smile-smile so far. Another great scene involves Skye's apartment being overrun by a choreographed mob of fans who pull and claw at her, which captures the same feeling of a waking nightmare that Darren Aronofsky sustained for two hours in his 2017 film Mother. 

But what really gets under your skin is how claustrophobic Skye’s world is, adding a realistic sense of dread to the story which was lacking from the original. Escorted from anonymous green rooms back to her expensive looking apartment, her world is isolated and cold – all shiny surfaces and washed out colours. The small cast, consisting of a needy assistant and an overbearing momager, heightens this feeling of isolation. There are long stretches of Smile 2’s 128-minute runtime where there is no puerile gimmick in sight – just a clammy feeling of unease.

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