Mark Costello’s review published on Letterboxd:
They say that when you’re smiling, the whole world smiles with you…
…and that’s exactly what Parker Finn has terrifyingly manifested for his vastly superior sequel to the smash hit horror of 2022. Now the whole world very much sees his haunting and frankly horrific smile…
Starting six days after the end of the first film, the curse spreads and in a brilliantly constructed one-shot set piece that culminates in an outrageously bloody car wreck that gives us the delicious iconography of the opening credits, Finn sets his stall out in beautifully ballsy fashion.
The amazing Naomi Scott, in a performance that is wrestling with Nell Parker Free and Margaret Qualley/Demi Moore for the title of Scream Queen of 2024, is Skye Riley, a Lady Gaga-esque pop sensation returning to the world stage after a year recovering from a debilitating car crash. However, struggling to cope with the pain still troubling her from her injuries, she heads to a friend’s house to pick up some under the counter prescription medication but encounters him in the grip of the curse…and following one of the most graphic and violent suicides committed to screen, the curse has now passed to her…and those terrifying smiles being to haunt her dreams, her life, her entire reality until she doesn’t know what’s real and what’s not…
Finn establishes a meticulous and malevolent mood with his liquid camera work – shots swoop slowly, never rushing, but feel like an omnipotent being is not just watching but gleefully manipulating the story unfolding before our eyes, creating a fun but vicious vibe throughout. Returning composer Cristobel Tapia de Veer produces an equally upsetting sonic tapestry to accompany the visuals and the audience’s nerves don’t stand a chance when the film’s entire landscape is so effectively controlled and crafted to be so downright eerie.
Scott’s uber famous popstrel is all alone and while obvious comments on the pressure the world of celebrity can create/inflict is front and centre, the film misses the deeper and more interesting hook of the mental health angle the first film had. Instead, it feels like simply a broader and more visually appealing backdrop upon which Finn can wreak his havoc…all those sequins and costumes and dance numbers…and it might have simply been that had it not been for Scott’s terrific performance. She creates such an empathetic character that even when her world is melting and her behaviour starts getting more and more erratic and toxic to those around her, there’s always a dose of sympathy in her portrayal of someone who feels simply lost and spiralling with nothing to grab hold of to anchor her in any way. And putting herself through the absolute wringer, it’s a performance that easily glosses over some of the more scrawny and generic story beats the narrative heads us down.
The film feels a little long at over two hours, with the underlying storyline being little more than Scott’s descent into the grip of the curse. There’s no mythology expansion, no exploration of it in any way, the entire film content to just subject Scott to the terrifying manifestations wrought upon her by Finn’s wicked imagination. But what prevents the film from being burdened by this and dragging are some stunningly realised set pieces that see Finn running the full gamut of his creative powers – a partly-hidden figure in a mirror that disappears and reappears sets the skin crawling and ends with a precision-machined explosive sting; an empty apartment that sees a dropped bottle lead to the following of a small pile of discarded clothes results in a throat catching slice of masterful tension building that ends in a similarly violent jolt of terror; and a dance troop appearing in the same apartment, all with their rictus grins firmly in place and moving like a carefully choreographed multi-limbed Lovecraftian leviathan, smiles never dropping and eyes never wavering from the camera, is a mesmerising and beautifully deranged slice of horrific whimsy…the film may be awash with cattle prod jump scares, but they are some of the best and most effective jump scares seen since, well, the last Smile.
Finn still can’t help himself though – the deflating ending of the previous film that saw his promising concept disappear into a morass of generic creature shenanigans makes a very unwelcome return in the final minutes here. But luckily these moments are fleeting, with Finn by then having more than put the hard yards in. He’s crafted a film that despite its scrawny narrative, its overly long run-time and its frankly silly creature design, delivers a knock out lead performance from Scott, generates a truly malignant atmosphere caked in a deliciously OTT amount of blood and gore throughout and thanks to a plethora of some of the best jump scares seen in years, leaves the nerves of the audience shredded into virtually nothing as the end credits begin to roll…
Far better than any expectations would surely have been set at, even those of the hardiest fans of the original film, Smile 2 is an absolutely brutal and bloody delight.
First published at AVForums here.
