Smile 2

Smile 2
Starring Naomi Scott, Rosemarie DeWitt, Lukas Gage, Miles Gutierrez-Riley
Directed by Parker Finn

I don't know what it is about "Smile" that people really enjoy. Even after reading reviews and such, it just boggles my mind, as the film itself is nothing more than a mix of "The Ring" and "It Follows" with more jump scares than actual plot. Sure, Sosie Bacon does a terrific job with the material she's been given, and the cinematography is sometimes decent, but overall the first film had my smile turned upside down. So with the sequel, I already had a preconceived notion as to how much I wouldn't like it, and by golly did it deliver on that aspect. Yet again this is nothing more than jump scare central with a great female lead and some decent cinematography, and yet again - for some odd reason - people are eating it up. Maybe I'm too cynical. Or maybe I've seen more messed up movies than most. Either way, the only smiles I had during this film was laughing at the idiocy of it all.

Skye Riley (Naomi Scott) is a famous pop singer who's underwent a traumatic event that led to her being hospitalized after a car crash that killed her celebrity boyfriend. After a long time involved in drugs and alcohol she's ready to reinvent herself and go back on tour clean and sober with her mother Elizabeth (Rosemarie DeWitt) serving as her manager. She visits her high school friend Lewis Fregoli (Lukas Gage) to get some drugs for her back when she witnesses him killing himself in front of her smiling. Soon she begins seeing people that aren't there, and experiencing time lapses and other unexplainable phenomena that makes her question her own sanity, until she meets a man who knows about the things happening to her with a way to fix it, but could lead to her early demise.

"Smile 2" is a bigger, bolder take on the original film, that's for sure. Director Parker Finn amps up every aspect of his previous film by focusing the entity on a celebrity that has millions of fans, as opposed to a lowly psychiatrist. This adds some more intrigue to the movie in that it touches on celebrity worship and appearances, but not in a way that makes any meaningful impact. Skye is a fractured woman, haunted by her past, and despite being all smiles on stage she harbors deep self-hatred and resentment on the inside. To this end, Naomi Scott delivers a compelling performance that tests her physical and mental fortitude in ways Sosie Bacon didn't have to. Scott uses her expressions to tell the story going on within, and for an over two-hour film it really takes a toll on the character and actor as well.

Apart from Scott's performance, however, there's nothing really noteworthy to say about this film. While people say it's unique from the original, I fail to see how: both center on this smile curse that kills the person infected within seven days, and both focus on flawed women who go through the emotional roller coaster that no one in their right mind would want to go through, with the same outcome - no one believing them. It's a tried and true trope of horror movies where the hero knows something is happening, but it's so outlandish that no one believes them, or because of a past mistake (in Skye's case, her previous drug use comes into play, as people think she's back on them instead of actually believing her).

The gore is increased as well, which is something I appreciated, along with the cinematography that had some impressive camera shots (I was particularly fond of one scene where we're in an elevator and the doors open to an areal view of a street). Other than that, the story is dull and weak, filled with the traditional tropes of the trade with jump scares aplenty and some shoddy CGI yet again, with a whole section of the film taking license from "47 Meters Down" if you get my drift. I didn't get scared once, except for one scene that made me jump because I was going through my phone when I heard the jump scare music on the screen.

Offering a bit more than just the same, "Smile 2" does have a strong capable lead actress but follows the generic tropes of horror storytelling with an overly bloated runtime and replacing actual scares with cheap jump scares that I guess I just don't appreciate as much as others do.

The Score: C