REVIEW #415 Smile 2 (2024)

SYNOPSIS

About to embark on a comeback world tour, global pop star Skye Riley begins to experience terrifying and inexplicable events, that sends her life into a downward spiral.

REVIEW

Smile 2 is a worthy sequel to the incredibly popular first movie, taking the core strengths of the original and applying an innovative twist to create something new and exciting. The scale of this movie is taken to new heights through the central protagonist Skye Riley and exploring the haunting curse through a pop sensation is a stroke of genius from director and creator, Parker Finn. But Naomi Scott has to take a lot of the praise here as she delivered one of the best performances of the year! Executing her full range of talents perfectly, the vocals and choreography to convincingly portray a pop star, combined with the haunting portrayal of a woman battling not only her own demons, but a supernatural one too! I will say that the ending is very predictable, you can see how Parker Finn is setting it up right from the beginning but despite that, it’s still a wild ride that audiences can sit back and enjoy. 

The cinematography is also impressive and it’s something that modern horror is really thriving in, constantly thinking of creative ways to present horror through camera angles, lighting and framing. I’m not a fan of the genre in general, but recently, I do seem to come away at least respecting this aspect of the filmmaking process, most of the time anyway. It can really elevate a horror beyond the usual tropes, if executed properly and that was the case here too. Perhaps not to the degree of a movie such as Longlegs but still impressive nonetheless. This sequel has me super excited for a potential third movie, where Finn can explore the lore of this curse even further, it left me with a bunch of questions surrounding the consequences of the big finale and that speaks volumes about the script and its impact on audiences. The strength of a horror, in my opinion, is not the jump scares or the gore (which this movie has) but if it can intrigue me, make me think, reel me into the lore or the mystery, and I think Smile has achieved that! 

RATING: 8 out of 10

Thanks for reading.

Film Review Club