Written and Directed by Parker Finn
Starring Naomi Scott, Rosemarie DeWitt and Lukas Gage
USA, 2024
Last year, the original SMILE surprised me by having more to it than its premise seemed to suggest, but let me down with an ending less original than the film that came before it. This year, SMILE 2 continues that tradition, though it might be even better than the original.
The “entity” in the SMILE movies that gets into the characters’ heads works as an allegory for mental illness, self-doubt, low self esteem – basically, all the negative stories we tell ourselves that make ourselves miserable. In that sense, this monster is more frightening and easy to relate to than many other horror monsters. The genius of these movies is that they could probably work as just character studies – the horror story is just the icing on the cake.
SMILE 2, being about a young pop star recovering from a very public and embarrassing substance abuse issue and embarking on her redemption tour, is even more about all this internal mind stuff than the original. What a perfect character and circumstance to use to show the dangers of your mind being poisoned against itself.
There’s a bit of convoluted storytelling at the beginning of the movie as it features a car-crash, and then the main character’s backstory also involves a car-crash – turns out these are two separate car crashes. Go figure. Also, the movie doesn’t end quite the way I would have liked, though it does set itself up for a big epic part three, so it has that going for it. Which is nice.
Those little nitpicks don’t really matter, though, because Naomi Scott nails the lead performance, going above and beyond and through the full range of mania, fear, cringe and mental breakdown. If the Academy took horror movies seriously, she’d be nominated for best actress. But they don’t, so she won’t.
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