Funereal Plots
Horror Cinema reviews

Matthew M. Bartlett

Smile 2

Writer/Director: Parker Finn

I don’t remember the movie Smile (2022). I know that I saw it, I know that there was a clever and effective marketing campaign, and I remember the creepy, um, smiles. But that’s it. I cant’ remember the premise or many of the scenes.

At the time I wrote it off as forgettable. Prescient of me!

A couple of years go by. A sequel is threatened. It comes out. There is buzz around this sequel. Social media is full, when people bother to talk about movies, of people who hated the first one but loved the second one.

So, I signed up for a free trial of one of the hundred streaming apps available for SmartTVs and, God help me, I watched it. My hopes weren’t high, but they were higher than they would have been if not for the social media chatter.

(Side note: Even after watching the entirety of the sequel, I couldn’t remember the premise. I think it’s something about a demon that makes people smile creepily and then kill themselves in front of someone who then makes people smile and kill themselves in front of the next person, and so on.)

Somewhere after maybe a half hour into the movie, I paused it and wrote this on Facebook: “Finally a movie confronts the trials and travails of being an international pop star who sings terrible songs with cringeworthy choreography. So far this manages the achievement of being somehow worse than the first one.” “I’m sure,” I continued (sarcastically, and one does need to make that clarification these days), “it would earn every second of its two-hour run time.”

Said international pop star is named Skye Riley, because of course she is. Her drug provider is the unwitting recipient of the curse, and he passes it on to her. As she deals with fans and handlers and press and an over-attentive mother/manager, creepy things transpire. But first, we need an introduction to Ms. Riley. One of the worst things about this kind of movie is the music to which they feel they must subject the viewer. Let’s try to make pop songs, they say, I imagine, but make them even worse than actual pop songs, and we can all pretend they’re huge hits.

One of the creepy things is she’s watching a video sent by the drug dealer, and he’s talking about something grinning at him, and all that’s on the screen is a big stupid smudge that I guess we’re supposed to see what it is. Not even pausing, not even walking right up to the television, which I had to move a cat in order to do, helped with that one. Another scene, presaged by a lot of excited chatter on social media, had our heroine being chased incrementally through her rich-star apartment by a grinning dance troupe. They look like they’re about to break into the Thriller choreography. People apparently found this scene creepy. I found it silly. It could have been creepy; this was a lost opportunity.

I have to mention Naomi Scott’s performance as Skye. I can’t decide if it’s a brave, raw, ferocious performance, or the uncanny ability to pull frightened or annoyed faces and shout Fuck. When I’m feeling angry at the movie, I say it’s the latter, but I suspect that in reality it’s the former. She deserves a better movie.