Smile 2 Review

 

I saw Smile 2, here are my thoughts…

The film follows Skye Riley (a Taylor Swift or Dua Lipa type pop star) who has to get ready for a new tour, deal with her recovery and mental trauma, and go up against a soul-sucking demon who I will refer to as Smiley… what a workload right lol

Now to me, the best thing about this movie was the ending, I’m not gonna spoil it, but I did call it weeks ago, so it’s nice I get to be able to say the three best words in the English language… I was right, I was right, I was right lol

But seriously, the style was very effective at being creepy. It’s a mix of clinical and offsetting, which are opposing styles, but the Director finds a nice balance between the two that makes everything feel off and claustrophobic. Made you feel like you’re in the head of the main character.

Naomi Scott is an actress I really enjoy and she’s great in the film. Her character is very morally grey at some point you feel terrible for her and want to see her succeed, other points you think… Yeah honey that’s not the demon, you’re making this worse for yourself. But it’s an interesting wrinkle that keeps the story on its toes and the audience engaged.

Smiley is a mega dick. It’s one thing to haunt somebody, but at least The Exorcist demon only made you lie in bed and call people cocksuckers.  Smiley will make you look crazy and make everyone mad at you before trying to kill you… Like you’re pushing this possession thing way too hard man, you’re making Demons look unprofessional lol

Rosemary DeWitt plays Skye’s mom, who could very easily have been written as an overbearing stage mom. However, her reasons for keeping the tour going are very understandable: “We would be letting venue people down, we’d be sued for millions, we would be putting people out of work.” These are very reasonable points that add good conflict to the character.

My favorite side character was Peter Jacobson as Morris. He comes in as a helper, and he brings his very down-to-earth and sympathetic vibe to the story and helps expand the supernatural lore.

Kyle Gallagher, Lukas Gage, Dylan Gelula, and Miles Gutierrez-Riley all give very good supporting roles. Each brought a unique energy and was entertaining to watch.

Ray Nicholson (who is Jack Nicholson's son) has a small role in the film and does a good job is q. He’s getting a lot of comparisons to how he resembles his dad in the press, but honestly, if they ever make MTV’s Jackass biofilm, he’d be perfect for Bam Margera.

Another standout aspect of this film is the jump scares. Now jump scares are as old as the genre itself, and it’s very easy for them to fall into cliché or be overdone. But Smile 2 is very creative and very smart with how they implement them. You could tell they were well thought out, which I appreciated.

I don’t know much about dance choreography or am that into that, but I thought the dances that Skye performed were cool and would be entertaining at a concert.

The movie does feel a bit elongated, it’s an over two-hour film and I think it would’ve been a lot tighter if it was around 1:50… but that’s just me

There are some Swiss cheese-level plot holes. Like when you’re watching the film, they won’t bother you, but if you start to think about it and the rules of Smiley and the Demon's relation to technology, you start to realize this might not all add up.

Also without spoiling anything… This movie should not be happening based on that first scene and the rules set up… if you see it and think about it, you’ll know what I’m talking about.

I found the ending super abrupt. It’s like they knew where they wanted the movie to end, but they wrote themselves into a corner or they realized they only had 10 minutes to wrap everything up because it felt like the movie just stops and goes “… and here’s the ending, thanks for coming”. Now, like I said earlier I do like the final scene a lot, but I was just sitting there thinking “That came out of nowhere”, at least compared to where the story was before

Now I know I just gave a lot of criticism, but I walked away from the film feeling more positive than negative. It was effectively scary, had cool ideas, great performances, and kept me guessing. I’ll give it between a high three stars and a low four stars. ⭐️⭐️⭐️ or ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️