“I live in the weak and the wounded… Doc.”
— Mary Hobbes
This quote from Brad Anderson’s criminally underseen and underappreciated Session 9 kept coming to me throughout my viewing of Smile 2. I could almost hear Jurian Hughes’ eerily disjointed voice winding its way through my mind, especially considering the themes of trauma that Smile and this sequel wield as their connection points to the audience. Both films have deeply broken main characters whose damage has left them unexpectedly open to a raging curse that kills its victims within six days, and the horror resides in how much this curse has its way with those suffering from it before it causes brutal self-disposal.
It’s often said that “depression is a liar.” Smile 2 turns this notion into a savage cudgel while exploring pop superstar Skye Riley’s (Naomi Scott) emergence from seclusion. As our story begins, she sits down with Drew Barrymore for an interview about her year away from the spotlight after a car accident kills her boyfriend and leaves her severely injured. Now sober, she shares with Drew her sense of loss and guilt while taking full responsibility for her drug-fueled former lifestyle and how much she hurt people, promising to do better by those she loves and her fans.
However, the film wastes no time in showing how she’s still affected by her trauma and the pressure of stardom. You might be thinking, “Sure, she’s just another spoiled popstar who had everything and pissed it all away – ooh, the pressure. What?!” And you’d be right. There are two versions of Skye Riley we see: the Skye who lashes out when things don’t go her way and the Skye who has to be handled by her team, including mother/manager Elizabeth (Rosemarie DeWitt) and benefactor Darius Bravo (Raúl Castillo). Skye’s used to getting what she wants, and she craves the control of her life she lost in the accident; even without hard drugs and with a sober focus, she’s lost, swimming against the pressure with no one on her side.
Naomi Scott is a tour de force as an already-crumbling woman whose soul is darkened by her past, willing to do anything to claw back to some semblance of normal. As her character is in every scene, Scott is called upon to be relentless and powerful, and she doesn’t fail. Not even for one second. When she’s on camera, Scott gives her all emotionally and physically, from her stage choreography to being toyed with by the entity and forced into its own version of a dance, where reality and hallucination are inseparably intertwined. Scott’s physicality helps sell the horror being shoveled upon Skye, committing herself to facial and bodily contortions that allow us to feel what’s happening to her.
Skye would like to think she’s strong and can push forward without drugs, but she’s got to maintain her edge and her stage presence for her fans. To do this, she enlists the help of old high school friend-turned-drug dealer Lewis (Lukas Gage) for Vicodin – nothing stronger, even though he offers the cocaine visible on his table. But instead of Vikes, she gets a big whopping dose of a nightmarish hell as she witnesses Lewis gruesomely turn himself into a pile of bloody goo. Having received the curse in the film’s bravura one-take cold open (and there’s something in that sequence equally heinous to unpack once you get over its shock), Lewis becomes the entity’s representation to Skye, often heralded by a sickening sound effect that accompanies the nasty sight of what’s left of Lewis’s face.
Writer/director Parker Finn blows past the restraint of Smile and heaves shock after shock upon us, offering few moments of respite from his pervasive onslaught of jump scares and dread. If Smile were a small traveling carnival, he makes Smile 2 a full-on amusement park packed with rictus grins and things that go “BOO” while carrying bloody knives. Visually, in terms of content and execution, Smile 2 is a wonderland, although you might not notice due to the level of carnage and suspense being built with each successive scene. The aforementioned single-take opening (which lasts a good five to seven minutes and is possibly stitched together from multiple takes) is just an example of how deeply Finn and returning cinematographer Charlie Sarroff want to immerse you in this fright fest, often relying on lengthy shots to keep us unsettled without the reprieve of a cut taking us to another angle.
This tactic, employed so ruthlessly by editor Elliot Greenberg, wisely uses Sarroff’s spellbinding photography to lull us into a sense of consistency before purposefully jerking us out of it with scare frames accompanied by composer Cristobal Tapia de Veer’s musical stings and sound designer Tobias Poppe’s blasts of noise. Tapia de Veer, also returning from the original, is a lot of the reason why the Smile duology successfully destroys their audiences. The score is not the strings/winds/brass/percussion type; instead, Tapia de Veer uses electronic, dubstep-like edits that explode out of the speakers and hammer our ears and nerves. At various points, we hear rhythmic, thrumming musical pulses that impossibly layer more tension atop our frayed senses; these are bits and pieces of Skye’s anguished screams, digitally cut up and EQed past easy recognition, displaying a terrifying and warped sense of humor in his score.
When leaving the film and the publicist asked for my reaction, I said, “You can quote me on this: absolute fucking nightmare fuel.” I don’t use profanity lightly in these reviews, but after a solid two hours of screaming my head off and cowering in my seat, those were the only words I could muster that accurately describe this film. The quality, scares, and intensity of Smile 2 leap far over the already high bar set by the original. Parker Finn knows how to give us more without being insulting or condescending; he goes straight up the gut and earns every bit of fear from the audience. Anchored by an electrifying performance by Naomi Scott and abetted by frights galore, Smile 2 does not mess around. It has not come to play. It does not care about your safe little microcosm. Smile 2 exists to wreak havoc on every one of your unsuspecting faculties and break you, from the opening resolution of the first film to its utterly diabolical ending… and it’ll grin crazily while it does so.
