Director: Parker Finn 
Starring: Naomi Scott, Rosemarie DeWitt, Lukas Gage, Miles Gutierrez-Riley, Peter Jacobson, Ray Nicholson, Dylan Gelugpa, Raul Castillo, Kyle Gallner
Certificate: 18
Run Time: 127 mins

Smile 2 is a horror sequel to the 2022 original, which itself was an expansion on a short film called Laura Hasn’t Slept. Although Smile had an abrasively aggressive marketing campaign, the film ended up being surprisingly excellent. This sequel is once again directed by Parker Finn, who made his debut with the original. Unlike many horror sequels that simply try and turn everything up to eleven and retread all the beats that made the original work, Finn is smart enough to not fall into this trap. Smile 2 follows troubled pop star Skye Riley (Naomi Scott) who’s about to head on tour after a public struggle with substance abuse and a car crash that killed her boyfriend a year earlier. It would be safe to say Riley isn’t in the best headspace and things get significantly uglier when the Smile Entity is passed onto her via her drug dealer. 

Until its final act, Smile 2 largely works and is refreshingly different from its predecessor. There’s a palpable sense of dread and Naomi Scott delivers a knockout performance as the doomed pop star. It’s unfashionable for horror performances to be recognised when it comes to Awards season, but she really carries the film with her convincing descent into madness. Finn deftly blends the rules associated with the demonic entity introduced in the original with a new setting and characters. Witnessing the mayhem unleashed in this operatic setting provides a real contrast to the smaller scale of the first film. The film’s also crisply lensed by returning cinematographer Charlie Sarroff with more than a fair share of Dutch angles.

This idea of upscaling the horror also has an effect on the running time, with Smile 2 running over the two hour mark. While in its first two acts, the longer running time works well to allow for a satisfying amount of character development and to build tension, the film’s final act falls short. It drags and the story starts to undermine its own logic to the point of becoming incoherent. The film’s ending is particularly unsatisfying and left a sour taste.

Smile 2 is ultimately a grander, more lavish sequel that has something to say on the modern celebrity and its toxic fandom. It’s not quite as strong as its predecessor, which I preferred with its simpler setup and more consistent narrative but this sequel still has an effectively nasty sting to its tail for horror fans. It’s a real shame the final act falls apart because until that point, Smile 2 is an effective horror sequel.