Smile 2

Two Million Miles

Smile 2
Directed by Parker Finn
USA/ Canada 2024
Paramount Pictures
UK Cinema Release Print.

Warning: Some implied spoilers as to the endings of the Smile movies.

Well, once again Paramount Pictures is testing the water to see if their potential audience are ready to walk a million miles for one of their Smiles and, from what I can hear in the overwhelming furore of positive feedback, I suspect the box office will certainly support the idea that there’s a lot of worn shoe leather out there this weekend.

I liked the first film quite a bit but think it went a little off track towards the end. Smile 2, is a much better sequel and, although it has nothing as standout as the ‘head dangling’ moment from the first one, I think this one is a much more accomplished movie and it’s just well written and directed (both credits to Finn for that) and has an absolutely incredible lead performance by actress/singer/song writer Naomi Scott. In this she plays pop singer Skye Riley, about to open her comeback tour after her formally drug fuelled ‘bad gal of rock’ days ended with a car crash that scarred her and killed her famous boyfriend, one year prior to the events in this film. In this story she is accompanied by her mum, played really well by Rosemarie DeWitt, who really goes all out in a gory scene in the last quarter of the movie.

The now clean and sober Skye, it turns out, is not prescribed very strong drugs because of her past history of abuse but she’s in quite a lot of pain in her back still from where she was injured in the car wreck. So in order to perform all her dance choreography she has a drug dealer she calls on for really strong pain killers. However, said drug dealer, as we see from the opening sequence, has become host to the Smile demon, which was also the antagonist of the first film (although, now I think back to that early scene, I’m not quite sure how this particular guy got himself infected, truth be told).

Anyway, if you remember the first film (reviewed here), the demon will toy with a person, feeding off their negativity and fear for a number of days, before making them kill themselves in front of someone wearing the big rictus grin of the marketing campaigns for the two movies, thus passing the demon on to the next victim. So when Skye goes round to his apartment late one night to try and get some pain killers, he bashes himself repeatedly in the face, to death, with a weight from his personal gym and transfers the demon into her... something she is more than made aware of not long after the incident.

The rest of the film is basically Skye trying to do press tours and ready herself for her concert while trying to ward off the constant smile demons and hallucinations of violence and carnage hijacking her throughout... some of which might be real and some of which may not. And it’s ferocious and fast paced and, honestly, almost every shot (apart from the pre-credits sequence involving some drug dealers) features Naomi Scott expressing a huge amount of different and often quite wild and strenuous emotions... she’s nothing short of sensational in this role. I’m pretty sure this must have been a lot of hard work for her because it can be exhausting just watching the thing.

Acting aside, it’s also nicely directed and has some wonderful shot compositions and even some nice dance choreography for some of the scenes. Some nice scene transitions too... such as when she is in an elevator (well, over her in the UK they are called lifts) and the doors open and instead of it being the lobby of the building, it opens onto the next shot which is a birds eye view of her pulling up in a car at her next destination... so expedient but creative shot design is the name of the game here. Although, to be honest, I’m still not quite sure why a lot of moderns directors lately seem to want to turn the image upside down in various scenes. It’s almost become a bizarre trend now and there’s a lot of that kind of shot in this movie.

All this makes for a fast paced horror story (you won’t feel the two hours plus running time) and it also has another wonderful score by the composer of the first, Cristobal Tapia de Veer. Although, like the first, the studio has not seen fit to issue a proper, stand alone CD of said score so, yeah, I guess I won’t be able to listen to this one either.

I will comment on the ending here though. Like the first one, Smile 2 is unrelentingly grim and, if possible, even darker than the first one. The ending is somewhat similar in some ways and, I wish I could say I didn’t see it coming but there’s a big clue as to what the demon benefits from latching onto a multi-media singing sensation and the film takes us to that place... but it at least does so in a way which makes more logical sense than the first movie, which seemed to have a bleak ending just for the sake of bleakness. This one doesn’t do that and, in a way, sets up for a sequel which could be a very elevated version of the evil experiences in the first two movies. I won’t say too much more about that but the central logic of the premise is better served by the ending it gets here, for sure... although I can’t help but think that if a third movie is made, they might decide to ignore the ending of this one and do something different to save on potential budgetary requirements.

Suffice is to say, I thought Smile 2 was great and look forward to revisiting it again on Blu Ray at some point soon. If you liked the first one then you should have absolutely no problem with the second one and, if you didn’t... well this one is a more polished and well thought through movie so, maybe still give it a go.

Smile

Cheese
Reflex

Smile
USA 2022
Directed by Parker Finn
Paramount Pictures
UK Cinema release print.

Warning: Very light spoilers.

So there’s a moment in the trailer of Smile which really got me to take a trek out to a preview screening of this in the UK (although, by the time this review sees the light of day, it will have just come out on general release). I dunno, preview windows seem to be getting smaller.

Anyway, the scene in question... and I don’t mind talking about it because it’s technically not a spoiler, as it’s included in most (possibly all) of the various Smile trailers... is when the lead protagonist is sitting in her car and somebody comes up to her window and taps on it. As she looks up, the head of the person outside the car dangles down like it’s been released from a bungee cord, a smile on its face. It’s a nice piece of imagery and, it’s a shame that surprise moment in the film is given away in the trailer but, it’s a heck of an image to sell it to people.

Smile stars Sosie Bacon as psychiatrist Dr. Rose Cotter and, one of her emergency patients is terrified out of her wits. She tells Rose about a smiling demon that’s been following her since somebody killed themselves in front of her and, when she clearly starts to see it in the room with them, Rose turns to the phone to call for security. By the time she’s turned around the patient has a big, rictus grin on her face and is staring straight at Rose as she cuts through part of her own face and then her throat with a shard of broken china. And, of course, from that point on, Rose starts getting hassled by the demon.

So, yeah, it’s yet another one of those pass the curse films but, that’s okay, I love those. They can trace back their roots at least as far as M. R. James’ short story Casting The Runes, which was adapted into a great movie called Night/Curse Of The Demon (reviewed here), a TV play (reviewed here) and, of course, many popular, unofficial modern variants such as the Ringu (aka Ring) films, Drag Me To Hell, It Follows (reviewed here) and Truth Or Dare (reviewed here)... among many others.

Like most of those films I just mentioned, the central curse or demon has no real origin story made clear (Ringu is a big exception to this rule, obviously) and, like many a zombie apocalypse film, the main protagonists are usually in the dark as to the why and who of the situation, in terms of said demonic entity. This film, then, follows the standard formula of the main ‘cursed’ individual trying to figure out the pattern and rules of the game in order to be able to stop it. Luckily for Rose (and the audience, for that matter), her ex-boyfriend is a cop and so she calls on him to help her in terms of bringing to light certain aspects of the case and to identify the presence of a ‘chain’ linking her to all the other victims... all but one of whom ended up taking their own life in a spectacular fashion in front of somebody, passing the curse on.

Two things which give this story credibility in terms of the way the Rose character is treated are quite clever. One is that they set up her character as somebody who does 80 hour working weeks and doesn’t really rest that much. So when she starts acting a little loopy, people assume this is just because she’s not getting enough down time. The other thing this movie does is give Rose and her sister a back story of a mother who suicided when Rose was a little girl... Rose choosing to run in fear rather than help save her from an overdose (which she didn’t realise was happening at the time)... so we also have a big dollop of guilt to throw into the mix and give the demonic entity something else to play with, which is nice.

My one slight criticism of the film is that it doesn’t really land the ending for me. These kinds of stories either end with disaster for the recipient of the demonic spirit or said recipient finds a way to pass the curse on (rarely can they break the chain)... and in this film the modus operandi of the demonic entity is that you either have to kill yourself, or somebody else, in front of someone to pass the curse. So, obviously, it’s not going to end well for anyone. And, although some misdirection is deliberately set up with one of those two rules... yeah, you’re probably going to see the ending of this one coming, for sure.

But, it’s a really fun ride, it has to be said. And there are some nice moments to be had. One is the head dangle scene I described earlier and the other, without giving too much away, is a nicely surreal special effect when you see just how the demon comes to inhabit its victims near the end of the movie.

Oh, and the score by Cristobel Tapia de Veer... it’s amazing. Like the best kind of modern horror meets sound design but with a decidedly strong ‘musique concrète’ vibe to it. And it really goes for it in terms of assaulting the audience in the audio space and being mixed in to the foreground of the movie loud and clear (as movie music should be). Such a shame there’s no CD of this one as I’m sure I would play it to death.

And that’s me done on Smile. It’s a fun little horror flick which is aided by some lovely cinematography, a great score and a wonderful central performance by Sosie Bacon. I would definitely recommend this to all the horror fans out there and I’ll definitely be trying to pick up a Blu Ray of this thing at some point soon. Fingers crossed it gets a proper physical release.