Smile 2

Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy? Smile 2 is over two-hours of meaningless psychological torment. Enjoy?
65/10072718
Starring
Naomi Scott, Rosemarie DeWitt, Lukas Gage
Director
Parker Finn
Rating
R
Genre
Horror, Mystery, Thriller
Release date
Oct 18, 2024
Overall Score
Rating Overview
Story/Plot
Visuals/Cinematography
Performance
Direction
Non-Wokeness
Rating Summary
Smile 2 opens by breaking its own rules and closes with a thud. The script consists of one hallucination after another, and while many of the jump scares are fun and done well, they're an inadequate substitute for a story.
Audience Woke Score (Vote)
2 people reacted to this.
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In Smile 2, global pop star Skye Riley (Naomi Scott) is gearing up for her highly anticipated comeback tour after a very public battle with substance abuse and the devastating car crash that claimed her boyfriend’s life. As the tour kicks off, strange and terrifying events begin to haunt her. With the weight of her past and the relentless pressures of fame closing in, Skye finds herself facing not only her inner demons but a dark force that threatens to destroy her.

Smile 2 Review

Smile 2 is a cautionary tale of diminishing returns. With only the thinnest of stories and zero personal stakes, as the Smile demon’s choice appears to be random, the film consists of virtually nothing but one hallucinatory jump scare after another. While each one is well crafted, there comes a point very early on when the lack of actual consequences, aside from some confusion by onlookers, morphs from fun scare to clock-ticking irritant as the repetition burns away narrative glycogen and muscle fatigue sets in.

Smile 2’s plot takes an hour and twenty minutes to make itself known (that’s 1 hour and 20 minutes of variations on the same hallucination gimmick). However, its second act, which should introduce any twists or changes in narrative direction, is more of an amorphous blob that absorbs and repeats the first act’s schtick only with higher-seeming fake stakes before oozing into its three-minute conclusion. A conclusion, by the way, that renders 80% of the film moot.

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Smile 2’s bloated runtime (2h 12m) and repetitive routine might have been redeemable had the writers not gone out of their way to make the protagonist appear deserving of her punishment. Alas, they substituted likability for edginess and catharsis for a twist.

The supporting cast gives mostly just north of serviceable performances. At the same time, Smile 2’s lead Naomi Scott, who played the strong independent Jasmin in the travesty that was the live-action Aladdin, is somewhat uneven as events build to cataclysmic. In these moments, Scott appears to be running out of emotional runway and cannot take off. Other times, her reactions are so animated and Vader-like “Noooooo” artificial that the lie sucks the energy out of the retreaded scare.

As an aside, what is it with Hollywood’s current love affair with guerilla musicals? Just tell the audience that a film is a musical (looking at you, Joker 2), or don’t make one. Smile 2 doesn’t quite cross the line into full-on Broadway, but it sure does experiment with it like its parents will be home soon.

In the end, despite several aesthetically interesting moments and the scariest game of Red Light, Green Light, Smile 2 is plagued by a too-unreliable narrator and a concept that seems to have little new to offer.

 

WOKE ELEMENTS

Cocktail Party Politics
  • There’s nothing in the narrative to support this, but Scott’s character’s personal assistant is clearly an effeminate gay man. It could have just as easily been a straight man, a masculine gay man, or a woman. I’m left to assume that it was a decision to give the filmmakers enough clout to be invited to the right cocktail parties and pat themselves on the back.

James Carrick

James Carrick is a passionate film enthusiast with a degree in theater and philosophy. James approaches dramatic criticism from a philosophic foundation grounded in aesthetics and ethics, offering insight and analysis that reveals layers of cinematic narrative with a touch of irreverence and a dash of snark.

7 comments

  • Zurna

    November 19, 2024 at 2:08 pm

    Lead is a lesbo and minority. Only male is gay.
    Woke.

    Reply

    • James Carrick

      November 19, 2024 at 2:24 pm

      I don’t recall her character being gay. She was haunted by a relationship with a man (Jack Nicholson’s son) throughout the film. No man has a significant role in Smile 2, but of the few who are in it in any capacity, only one was noticeably gay.

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  • Jetscarf

    December 5, 2024 at 12:37 pm

    “No man has a significant role in Smile 2” – Woke.

    Oh and the film has ‘diversity’ crawling out of it’s arse but of course the gang of criminal killers was all white. And the drug dealer.

    99% based? You must be joking.

    Reply

    • James Carrick

      December 5, 2024 at 12:55 pm

      Famous pop stars don’t buy dime bags from Pookie on the corner.

      The diversity was pretty organic for a film set in New York City.

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  • Jetscarf

    December 5, 2024 at 6:47 pm

    Was the exclusively white gang of killers organic for NYC?

    Reply

    • James Carrick

      December 5, 2024 at 8:12 pm

      The gang scene was set in a small town in New Jersey.

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  • jibbity

    December 18, 2024 at 11:32 pm

    James…you’re off on this one. While I didn’t see this movie (and have no intention of doing so), Jetscarf makes excellent points.

    This is NO different from many movies where the violent street thug, drug dealer, pimp is white A LOT of the times if not exclusively.

    Saw a comment once a few years back that nails it (and the propensity for a majority of movies to sugar coat the real world or at least base it on delusions): “In modern movies not all white men are bad…but all bad men ARE white.” I’ve seen it over & over & over for it NOT to be a major woke-ish point in movies and to purposely obfuscate real life truths (probably in order to chop down straight white males even further and/or “protect” the dreamed up perfect images of “people of color”).

    Reply

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