It’s not quite Halloween as of this writing, and it might not be at the time of your reading—nonetheless, Happy Halloween! May your holiday be/have been filled with plenty of Spooky Nerds Gummy Clusters & Ropes, which are my Halloween candy of the year. As for the best horror movie of 2024—’tis the season, after all—I’m ready to drown out all the Terrifier 3 love with an ode to Smile 2.
Which isn’t to say Terrifier 3 doesn’t belong in the conversation. It absolutely does. The innovations in gore from Damien Leone & co. are indeed among some of the finest the slaughter genre has seen on a AAA-cinema scale. But don’t falsely presume, just because the first installment in the Smile franchise in 2022 wasn’t overly gory, that this one doesn’t step it up a notch.
It does. Almost from the jump it does. How’s a smear of blood shaped like a smile so long it could be a tire tread sound? Light work, probably. Well—it is for Smile 2, as well, which does a fantastic job of doubling down on the gore the first film seemed to reserve in the interest of, perhaps, ensuring the psychological horror, foremost, stuck the landing.
Smile 2 seemed to throw any reservations it may have had, in the first film, with navigating its world on-screen that are so imaginatively dreadful and brutal and hopeless such that the sequel’s lasting effect deserves to be in the conversation with prestige-label horror dramas like Hereditary.
And its theatergoing experience is one of the most dynamic I’ve seen in a while. Spoilers ahead.
The prologue(?)
When the lights dim, the first shot is of Naomi Scott (who plays Skye Riley, the film’s lead) on a footstool at the center of what looks like a stage, with a black drop curtain behind her. She thanks us, the audience, for coming out to see this movie. Naomi, in so many words, expresses how excited she is that this franchise is continuing, and that she gets to be a part of it. She invites us to enjoy the show.
And that’s it. Then we roll right into the film. Hold up—sorry?
I can’t remember the last time I’ve gone to the theater and been greeted by a clip of someone responsible for making the film expressing gratitude to the audience for attending. And, like—this is Smile. I’m expecting some sneering evil to break the fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh walls with this little gimmick.
But nothing. And no other shoe drops, either. No mid-/post-credit scene. Just an effervescent welcome from the film’s star, who’s best known for playing Jasmine in the live-action Aladdin adaptation in 2019.
Either way, this was extremely disarming. Maybe that’s the point. I kinda throw my hands up. Is it a bit? Genuine gesture of thanks for coming out to the theater? Just some weird tactic to throw us off our game even before the narrative begins? What am I missing, here?
Something, I’m sure of it. I digress.
The setup
We begin exactly six days after Smile (original) ended, so we know the nameless, smiling, giant, gangly parasite (or whatever) is less than 24 hours from its full incubation period. Joel has but a day to live.
Which, before we get too deep—this is a good opportunity to review. Let’s go over some quick reminders about what we know, going into this film, about the monster in the Smile universe:
- It passes from person-to-person only when its new host (Dr. Cotter/Joel/Skye) sees its former host, at the end of incubation, kill itself while smiling.
- From the time you witness a brutal, smiling suicide, you have seven days until the parasite fully incubates, kills you, and passes to someone else.
- It grows more powerful each day of its gestation, and it erodes its host’s purchase on time, space, and reality itself; it is, at times, almost impossible for its host to know what’s real and what’s not.
- It preys on self-doubt and trauma.
- The prevailing theory on how to defeat it is to die with it alone (which is nearly impossible, seeing as, even if it makes you think you’re dying alone, it’s playing a trick on you—see reality-bending above, etc.).
None of this reality-bending, however, seems to be happening for Joel. And Joel’s not ready to die. No way.
He’s found a few gangbangers who’ve committed reprehensible crimes. Brothers. He’ll kill one in front of the other, ensure the other watches the entire death, and he’ll leave a free man, having passed this evil onto someone who, in his mind, deserves it. A bit messy, but easy enough.
It doesn’t go to plan. Both brothers die, and Joel is certain he’s blown it, but, from the corner, a young man named Lewis (Lukas Gage) slips from where he’s hiding. He’s come to buy drugs from the gangbangers, he swears. Nothing like those crimes they were involved in. They deserved to die, he says. And Joel realizes that Lewis was the unwitting witness unto whom the parasite has now been passed.
Joel leaves Lewis unharmed, and after a lovely bit of a horror movie jump-scare fastball, we’re off.
The story
Skye Riley (Scott) is a world-famous pop star whose last global tour was abruptly cancelled before its first show even opened doors. Skye and Parker Hudson, her boyfriend at the time and himself a Hollywood star, got into a car accident the night before the tour’s opener. Hudson died on impact. They were, tests showed, both wildly intoxicated. Skye’s back and torso were gravely injured (she has surgery scars that might as well stretch from neck to navel) such that her recovery from the accident was not just emotional and chemical, but physical as well.
However—relaunch! Rebrand! Skye’s first public appearance since the accident—about a year has passed—is on the Drew Barrymore show and she announces her world tour, beginning at MSG later that week. Skye apologies for her past indiscretions. She debuts a new hairstyle, something a bit in the realm of pixie, that really is just out of necessity: during her recovery, Skye’s major self-harm tic was pulling her own hair out by the fistful.
And while everyone around her—her mother, who’s an essential part of her team (the first of many nods to Taylor Swift) and certainly the most vocal, as well as her assistant, Justin, who is softspoken, acquiescent, and too-gentle—is begging Skye to keep her eye to the future, vestiges from the accident still haunt Skye. She chugs entire bottles of VOSS water whenever she has the impulse to use. She struggles with back pain in her rehearsals, which is residual from the car accident, and perhaps somewhat psychosomatic. For, yes. Of course she misses Paul. But worst of all, at present, and most material, is the back pain.
Dangerous road, taking painkillers as a reformed addict. And the channels through which one must go, am I right? You see where this is going: Skye ends up at Lewis’s apartment, Lewis is at the end of the incubation period, he smashes his face in—just right there, dead center in the frame—with a 35lb weight rack plate, and Skye watches.
One of the world’s biggest pop stars—someone who, at any given time, may be the subject of tens of thousands of eyes—has just now been infested with a parasite that will jump to any and all witnesses of her suicide.
It sure would be disconcerting on a super major scale if something unfortunate were to happen in an arena!
The monster
Skye is already pretty alone, but for her family and her team. Easy prey. And she hates herself for her mistakes, for being so responsible in Paul’s death, for struggling with her recovery the way she does. She might just plain hate herself period.
And so begins the swirl of the drain. The details I subsequently list here will only make sense to you—in that they make no sense at all—if you’ve seen the first Smile. They go to show the absolute power this monster has over its host:
Skye, during what one is to assume was the more volatile period of her drug use, burned bridges with her best friend, Gemma. Skye’s mother, however, in the days after Barrymore, notices Skye doesn’t seem quite right. So she tells Skye to call Gemma, make amends, and ask Gemma to accompany her on tour. A centering presence, a reminder that Skye’s past isn’t all horrible.
After a few typical smiling strangers and vicious nightmares, Skye does this and leaves a voicemail. Gemma calls right back. Gemma comes over. She forgives Skye, in that casual way that best friends do: You’ve wounded me forever, but you could also never hurt me, so whatever, let’s pick up right where we left off. They are ride-or-dies! Besties to the end, after all.
And, while Gemma’s not quite sure she’s ready to commit to accompanying Skye on tour, she will, however, give Skye a desperate and bloody ride to Staten Island toward the end of the movie. An escape attempt when all else is lost for Skye. Besties to the end, indeed.
Except, during the frantic car ride, the real Gemma calls Skye. She’s just giving a ring to return Skye’s voicemail. You know, the one from a few days ago? Gemma was unsure, she says, if she was even going to call back. But all of Skye’s weird text messages have concerned her; the messages imply a friendship that Gemma has not yet agreed to. And, frankly, Gemma’s not sure she’ll ever be ready for it again.
And, of course, we realize it all as Skye does, with the excruciating swing of the camera back to the driver’s seat, and a smiling Gemma staring at Skye through her eyebrows. Turns out the Gemma driving the car is, in fact, the parasite—or, actually, Skye-as-parasite—and Skye nearly gets into an accident upon coming to.
An absolutely killer, bait-and-switch, long-form joke with a sneering punchline. So, too, really, is the whole movie, the ending of which I will not spoil here.
The review
It’s a bit brilliant how the premise scratches the anxious itches dominating so many people in their twenties today: addiction and subsequent sobriety journeys, unhealthy obsessions with celebrity, imposter syndrome. Toss in the clear parallel between Skye Riley’s redemption tour and the cultural monument that will forever be Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour, and you’ve got a premise that doesn’t really need to do much work to settle into the minds of the American moviegoing public. Not to mention the public’s fascination with other summer 2024 superstars on tour, like Chappell Roan, Sabrina Carpenter, Dua Lipa, etc.
The parasite in the Smile universe to me seems the perfect incarnation of what good horror does: it systematically corrodes away the temples in which you take absolute shelter. Naomi Scott’s nonverbal acting, when it came to Skye’s utter and helpless despair, is among some of the best I’ve seen in the horror genre in years. This franchise charges its characters with reaching brinks of desperation that may feel logical in the universe but are in fact ridiculous: returning to one’s childhood home to self-immolate, alone, so as to purge the parasite forever. Or, in Smile 2‘s case, agreeing to have a questionable ER doctor stop-and-restart your heart in the freezer of an abandoned Pizza Hut. That eccentric bit does not land without Scott absolutely nailing this performance, which she does.
And, yes, I did say Pizza Hut. That’s what I mean by this movie gets a little more imaginative. It has fun with itself. Not just a Pizza Hut, but an abandoned Pizza Hut! Backup dancers as a smiling horde, TikTok dancing (but in this creepy red-light-green-light rhythm) their way ever-closer to you. Just an apropos-of-nothing reference to and visual of a man wrenching his own jaw off with a crowbar in a parking garage. A smiling little girl with braces and pigtails that looks like she belongs in a Pixar movie. A similar long-form con by the parasite as Madeline Northcott (Rose’s therapist) in Smile, except this one hits closer to home for Skye, and reminds us that we are not even safe from our best friends.
And there’s much, much more gore. It’s earned, though, and paired so well with fantastic sound editing. Expect an abundance of appearances of bones and mangled flesh that offset the glamor bedazzling the rehearsals of Skye’s tour. Skye’s scars get some time in the spotlight, gorewise. And, now that I mention it, there’s just a lot of jaw stuff going on in this one. It’s a bloody riot, and it was refreshing to see Finn push the boundaries a bit in terms of visual horror.
Where the first movie also flubbed a bit, narratively, Smile 2 thrives. Rose Cotter’s haunting memory of having let her mom die of an overdose always felt a bit smushed into the story for me, especially as the catalyst for her proclivity to the monster’s hunger. Perhaps this is because Smile made the mistake of being too withholding about Rose’s trauma; we did, after all, never really understand the full extent of what plagued her until she returns to her childhood home, with about 20 minutes of runtime left.
But Smile 2 doesn’t give you a break from Skye’s insecurities, in the same way celebrities get smothered by their audiences. In not getting a break from Skye’s insecurities, we are constantly besieged by the monster, too.
The bottom line
Not only did Smile 2 improve upon its predecessor narratively, but it did so terrifically, horrifically. The experience of witnessing a host of the Smile parasite is, indeed, incredibly visceral. The cinematography keeps you close to the terror; the set designs always include some piece of unsettling art, like a third-eye paperweight or a painting of a rabbit that recalls Donnie Darko. The sound design is as good as that of any in a James Wan film, which I always think have some of the most superlative sound editing in the genre.
And, as someone who’s previously battled substance issues, I felt the rhetoric the monster used to remind Skye that she is useless, hopeless, alone. It wasn’t melodrama; it never is, with Smile. I understood those decision-point moments for Skye, when everything was framed as: How can I stop hurting everyone around me? It’s exactly how you ask for help when you don’t know how to help yourself. Or, in Skye’s case, can’t help yourself. She is not in control.
I remain wickedly impressed by the way this franchise articulates, incarnates, and elevates the experience of being under a constant attack of horrors. Finn & co. are relentless about breaking down character defenses; in Smile 2, these defenses were ones the average moviegoer might find a bit more universal than those of Rose Cotter’s in Smile, and it’s to the movie’s great benefit.
It all happens with such sinister joy, too! I truly cannot get over how much this movie big-leagued my imagination. Got right in my face with a big bloody sneer, licked its lips, and laughed.
It recalled, for me, the following line from Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Ambitious Guest” (p.s. I largely consider his “Young Goodman Brown” to be the most terrifying short story in all of American literature, if you’re looking for a quick spooky read):
“Old and young, we dream of graves and monuments,” murmured the stranger youth. “I wonder how mariners feel when the ship is sinking, and they, unknown and undistinguished, are to be buried together in the ocean—that wide and nameless sepulchre.”
Which is to say: We have no idea just how dreadful it can get. But, as far as Smile 2 goes, it’s a dreadful good time.
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