It’s always hard, and basically always silly, to try to compare a sequel to an original in an up-and-down “which one is better?” contest. I’ll just put it out there that I think some things here are better than the original and there are other things that I think the original did better. But one thing that you kind of have to bring up at the beginning of a review of Smile 2 is the degree-of-difficulty discrepancy.
I’m not going to rehash what I said in my previous review, but I’ll just remind you of the bottom line when it came to my expectations for the movie: my expectations were that the first movie would be mediocre, generic and not very good. Going in with those expectations, I got blown away. Going into Smile 2, my hopes were sky(e?)-high. Smile 2 didn’t have the advantage of surprise on its side, didn’t have my low expectations working with it. So, Smile 2 has a way harder task right from the beginning. And did it blow me away? Well, no, because I knew what the first film was and I knew what writer-director Parker Finn was both up to and capable of. But it did the next best thing; it lived up to the first movie for me. I was not disappointed in the least.
Smile 2 delivers a tense, dread-soaked, often terrifying and anxiety inducing experience. Like the first film, it is anchored by a brilliant, fully committed lead performance, this time from Naomi Scott as pop superstar Skye Riley. I loved that the movie didn’t just replicate the first film’s main character. I genuinely think the difference between the two main characters is one of the strongest things so far about this franchise. Whereas Sosie Bacon’s performance as Rose in Smile gave us a character that was broken by trauma in a way that led her to go inside herself, Scott’s performance in this film is an explosive volcano. Rose would retreat inward and it was the vulnerability and suffering of that performance that was so disturbing to me; Skye, on the other hand, expresses her helplessness in rage. It's not that she doesn’t show fear and vulnerability at times, but the moments that hit the hardest for me were the moments when Scott would erupt in anger, screaming or breaking things. And while Bacon found Rose’s pain in stillness, often curling in on herself or freezing in place, Scott throws herself around this movie like a weapon, flinging herself down hallways at a dead run, careening into walls like a caged animal.
And, in many ways, she is caged. This movie continues the theme of exploring trauma established by the first film, but it broadens it out in a compelling way by making itself also a movie about celebrity or superstardom. Scott’s Skye is a woman that has been broken by the music industry and the crushing weight of fame. The portrayal is of a woman already collapsing under the pressures of her life before the evil entity enters her life. She’s on the raw edge, ready to collapse already, and I think it’s interesting that her rage fits into stereotypically “diva” behavior at times, screaming at her back-up dancers for being out of place during a rehearsal, refusing to go into rehab, etc. At one point, she refuses to wear a particular outfit because, as she puts it, her scars will show through. She’s talking about the physical scars remaining from her car accident, but she’s also kind of not. By contextualizing all of this behavior into a horror film, I think the movie is trying to say something deeper about the way women celebrities are perceived. I couldn’t help but think of Pablo Larrain’s Spencer, his fantasy on Princess Diana, while watching this movie; like this one, that movie was interested in contextualizing the behavior of a famous woman by letting us really understand the immense pressure of her life and I’ll go to bat for Spencer being a horror movie of its own kind. Smile 2 has the same claustrophobic feeling, the same feeling of reality slipping out of hand and a similarly striking lead performance.
Anyway, all things considered, Smile 2 is a worthy successor to the first film, executing some things better and widening its thematic lense. I’m not sure there’s anyone here as good at the creepy smile as Caitlin Stasey was in the first movie and the biggest jump scare in this one isn’t as good as the laptop jump scare in the first one, but it is pretty good. Most of all though, I’m just glad they didn’t just repeat the same things. Whichever one might be your favorite or “the best,” the truth is that they are excellent companion pieces and that’s good enough for me. Two phenomenal horror movies when I wasn’t even really expecting one? Well, now I am smiling. 4 stars.
tl;dr – fantastic horror sequel expands on the themes of the first film in fascinating ways and delivers solid creeps and scares; features a phenomenal lead performance. 4 stars.