A Pop Star Shares the Stage with a Deadly Curse

Naomi Scott in "Smile 2"
Photo Credit: RottenTomatoes.com

In 2022, writer-director Parker Finn expanded his 2020 short film, “Laura Hasn’t Slept,” into the disturbing feature, “Smile.”  Similar to “Saw,” “Mama,” and “Lights Out,” Finn continued the tradition of filmmakers taking their small horror ideas and expanding them into movies that chill, petrify, or both.  Through strong acting and some very creepy visuals, Finn gave us a memorable shocker that announced him as a new talent to watch in horror cinema.

Finn now returns to write and direct “Smile 2,” where he delivers a sequel that isn’t only as good as the original, but might even surpass it in some respects, boasting a stellar lead performance, strong technical prowess, and a story that’s both tense and grim.

Skye Riley (Naomi Scott) is a pop star who’s trying to get her life back on track after suffering from loss and addiction.  When she becomes the latest victim of a curse, Skye is plagued by frightening occurrences as she prepares for her comeback tour.

Scott delivers an emotionally visceral performance of someone who’s trying to heal from previous devastating life changes while facing a curse that manages to resurrect the demons she’s tried to cast away.  She exhibits an intensity in Skye becoming unraveled as each day brings a deeper horror into her life and cripples her sanity.  This is a performance that hooks you into the frightful nature of the scenario, with Scott displaying the depths of Skye’s pain as she faces a past that continues to haunt her.  It’s work that mixes fear, sadness, and anger, and Scott elicits a power from each of those feelings as her character becomes more and more desperate to save herself from a horrible fate.  With this being Scott’s first horror film, she couldn’t have made a bigger entrance than with a portrayal that has you experience her fear and desperation as the curse closes in on her.

Out of all of the supporting performances, the standout is Lukas Gage, who portrays an acquaintance of Skye’s.  In just one scene near the start of the film, he absorbs you in the crushing fear in which the curse has enveloped him, giving a crazed portrayal of someone who knows he’s at the end of the line and all out of options.  It’s a sequence that rattles you, not only because of the unsettling aesthetic, but because of his performance that absorbs you back into the fear and paranoia that was felt in the first movie.  We know the horror that’s in store for Skye, and Gage’s performance presents the similar sense of dread that Skye will carry for the rest of the film.

Although the screenplay by Finn follows several of the first film’s principal beats, he makes up for that with the effectiveness in which he utilizes the music-industry setting.  The story builds in a way that has you think about just how much worse Skye’s life can spiral out of control.  With Skye not being able to tell what’s real and what’s not, we begin to understand that manipulation the narrative is using, having us wonder what’s real and what the curse wants Skye to see.  The story places her in several scenarios that would put a character in her profession on edge in a normal life, but with the curse that’s added into the mix, the apprehension is ramped up as the film goes from an everyday person of the first film to someone in this film who’s always in the public eye.  Due to the people that Skye surrounds herself with as a celebrity, the narrative gives plenty of characters with whom Skye interacts, and this allows us to get to know who she is and how she expresses the tension and fear that she feels as it becomes stronger.

Charlie Sarroff, who provided the cinematography for the first film, gives some great lensing, particularly in the opening scene, which is filmed all in one take.  It’s a scene that invests you right away in the movie and offers you a clue to the creativity of the camerawork that you’ll see throughout the film, and it doesn’t disappoint.  Sarroff also takes advantage in the way he photographs the expansive settings of the film, be it concert venues or Skye’s spacious NYC apartment.  And, just like in the first movie, Sarroff isn’t afraid to go a little weird with the imagery.  With the sequel going bigger, Sarroff ensures that the ambition of his camerawork reflects the film’s wider scope and makes this curse seem that much more terrifying.

Finn constructs a very unsettling movie that shows a continued determination to build his still-young horror profile within features, and he does so by using a bigger setting and impactful dramatic stakes with the main character.  After showing filmmaking confidence when making his short film into a feature, he exhibits dedication to the overall story of this series, having delivered two films that get under your skin from beginning to end by delivering great jump scares and some harrowing emotion.  Finn is a director who has an ability to add smarts into mainstream horror entertainment, and whenever he moves on to something outside of “Smile,” he’ll surely deliver a must-see.

Finn’s multiplex success all started with an 11-minute short film, and “Smile 2” offers a terrific new chapter in this story.  And, whether or not Finn makes a third feature from this, we can agree his “Smile” movies aren’t afraid to bear their teeth.

Grade: A-