Naomi Scott in Park Fenn’s horror sequel

Parker Finn’s 2022 feature film debut, Smileclearly shaped by chain horror, e.g. ring and it followsin which a death curse is passed from victim to victim while the anguished protagonist attempts to escape it. Despite the film’s familiarity, it succeeds, in part because the writer-director brings a rich style and sustained anxiety to the derivative premise, but also because the means of transfer are so uncomfortably ordinary—toothy. laughing out loud. The film cost $17 million to make and grossed over $200 million worldwide, making a sequel inevitable.

Cut to smile 2which swapped the clinical psychiatrist played by Sosie Bacon for Skye Riley, played by Naomi Scott. A traumatized global pop star for an evil entity to enjoy. That meant transforming from a protagonist with professional training and a troubled personal history to a cross between Katy Perry and Lady Gaga who was neurotic and never had much of a chance. That doesn’t mean this well-acted film isn’t a fun moment, hitting you with a barrage of effective jump scares and gory scenes. But it does mean that people abandon restraint in favor of larger, bolder excesses. Any film known for its “monster effects” doesn’t strive for subtlety.

Audiences who got hooked the first time will likely watch again, which should give Paramount a lead at the Halloween box office. if smile 2 is another hit, don’t be surprised to see the franchise continue, especially since this one ended with the promise of an even bigger sprawl.

Finn begins filming six days after the events of the first film, with good-guy cop Joel (Kyle Gallner) sitting in a parked car, shaking with fear at the cost of helping his panicked ex-girlfriend . Determined to responsibly remove the curse, he puts on a balaclava and enters the home of two murderous drug dealer brothers, intending to kill one of them while the other watches, then when the second brother’s face shows When he looked happy, his fate was sealed.

The plan goes as far south as possible in the crazy trailer, which is bad news for Lewis (Lucas Gage), a low-level dealer who gets caught up in the chaos. The macabre humor that runs throughout is evident in the remains of one injured man, whose blood and guts are smeared on the road in the shape of – you guessed it – a smile.

Meanwhile, Skye is preparing to return from a year away from the spotlight after her actor boyfriend Paul (Ray Nicholson) was killed in a near-fatal car accident. Photos of her drinking and doing cocaine were all over the tabloids, but now she’s clean and ready to embark on a major tour starting in New York City. She gave her first public interview since the accident The Drew Barrymore Showwhose host seemed just a little uncomfortable playing himself.

Pushed by her agent mother, Elizabeth (Rosemary DeWitt), and doted on by her adoring assistant, Joshua (Miles Gutierrez-Riley), Skye devotes herself to to rehearsals. When intense dancing aggravated a back injury she sustained from a car accident, she kept it secret but contacted her former dealer to get some Vicodin. That’s Lewis, of course, an old acquaintance from high school who’s already restless and slipping into paranoid delusions when Skye arrives. What she witnessed was truly disturbing and without painkillers she was in a lot of pain.

The craft of filmmaking has come a long way from here SmileReturning DP Charlie Saroff makes clever use of confusing angles and mirrored shots, flipping the frame again as Skye begins to unravel the mystery. There’s a hint of De Palma in the moody lighting and creepy accelerated zooming in as she begins to see sinister visions of strangers and people she knows, their faces transformed by a clown’s grin.

Dan Kenyon’s dense sound design is another highly effective component, often blurring ambient noise and composer Cristobal Tapia de Veer’s eerie The line between a soundtrack that blends clanks, groans, throbbing industrial sounds, and leans heavily into distortion.

Scott does an excellent job of showing how Skye’s fears combine with her guilt over the people she harmed when her substance abuse problem spiraled out of control. The conflict also made her want to continue fulfilling her professional obligations of filming, sound checks, costume fittings and more rehearsals.

Despite her daughter’s escalating emotions, Elizabeth urges Skye to stick to the schedule, reminding her that the record label led by Darius (Raul Castillo) has invested millions in the tour Dollar. “You need to stay hydrated,” her mother keeps telling her, which makes for a hilariously placed joke as Skye drinks countless bottles of Voss water.

One striking early scene is a fan meeting, where Joshua manages a long line of enthusiastic admirers, ushering them in for autographs and photos. Skye is warm and patient with them at first, until a deranged obsession scares her. (It wouldn’t be the last time she saw him, at least in her mind.) No sooner had she regained her composure than a preteen girl with pigtails walked to the front of the line, revealing her braces and an obvious look on her face. The crazy smile that haunts Skye’s dreams and Her waking hours.

The uncertainty between reality and visceral hallucination eventually becomes a weakness as the story progresses, even if some of the later scenes are masterful.

One elimination in particular saw Skye watching the dancers from her show gather at the door of her apartment with leering smiles. Every time she looked away, reassuring herself that it was just her imagination, they moved closer, straddling the furniture and climbing up the walls like the Devil Fosse kids. As they close in on her, their movements become powerful echoes of the dance we’ve seen in rehearsals.

Another key sequence is a “Music Inspires Hope” fundraiser for underprivileged youth, where Darius convinces Skye to be the host. Skye is freshly traumatized but unable to snap out of it, and when the teleprompter fails, she unsettles the party crowd by improvising, her speech about the harrowing side of the music industry hopeless. It doesn’t help that her dead boyfriend shows up at awkward times and smiles like a maniac.

Skye finds temporary solace in repairing her broken relationship with her best friend Gemma (Dylan Gelula), whose hilarious reaction to the horrific reveal (“Eww”) will make you wish we could See more of her. There were also anonymous text messages that seemed clear about what Skye was going through. Eventually, he is revealed to be Maurice (Peter Jacobson), who has in-depth knowledge of the parasitic spirit and a theory on how to neutralize it.

When Skye resists and desperately agrees to try Maurice’s dangerous removal methods, Finn begins to lose narrative control. The film flicks in and out of reality, apparently to reflect what Skye has been through. But as this shift became more frequent, punctuated by increasingly bloody violence, it also had a disengagement effect.

While Scott is just as compelling, the famous, wealthy pop icon is a less relatable protagonist than the grounded therapist in the first film, who races against time, Understanding and overcoming her own pain helped her tremendously. Smile The structural skeleton of the program. Skye is devastated from the moment of her fateful encounter, and in a world where there is little reality, watching an unstable protagonist be terrorized is even less satisfying than watching someone actively fighting for survival. So gripping.

As the sequel ramps up to the grandeur of Skye’s ultimate ordeal, it becomes less creepy and more alienating. elements of production Smile The relatively simple conceit becomes muddled as the film stretches over two hours, the gore sacrificing your skin.

smile 2 Finn proves to be a talented visual stylist with a sure eye for actors. He might just need to shed the “more is better” misconception a bit and focus more on his storytelling craft. Still, there’s a lot to be said for a director so impervious to timidity, and the sequel will make legions of horror fans grin from ear to ear.