Grin Reaper: Visceral visuals, sly humor prevent overstuffed ‘Smile 2’ from being frowned upon
“Smile 2” — 3 stars
A great horror movie dwells deep within Parker Finn’s enigmatic “Smile 2,” fighting to come out like Margaret Qualley struggling hard to emerge from Demi Moore’s grossly split backside in “The Substance.”
“Smile 2” messes massively with our perceptions of reality. It constantly keeps us off-kilter, employing sneaky twists and a brutal barrage of mind-bending point-of-view perspectives that plop us directly inside the embattled brain of a woman under psychic assault by a nebulous evil entity.
Yet, the viscerally visual “Smile 2” still suffers from the same issues plaguing the derivative, repetitious, overly long, jump-scare-saturated 2022 original “Smile.”
The sequel begins with a breathtaking single-shot, stand-alone action sequence in which a police officer (reprised by Kyle Gallner from “Smile”) stages a shoot-out/stand-off with bad guys.
After this stunning start (look for the clever blood-streak smile smeared on the street), this story quickly veers into a different direction, detailing the life of a Taylor Swift-style international pop star named Skye Riley (British singer/actress Naomi Scott in a fiercely committed, multilayered performance).
Skye’s on the mend, physically and emotionally, from a horrific car accident that killed her actor boyfriend, Paul Hudson (Ray Nicholson), and left her body scarred and dangerously unreliable, leading to an addiction to pain killers.
Skye has completed a new album titled “Too Much For One Heart” and is about to embark on an international tour when she seeks out a former classmate and supplier, Lewis (Lukas Gage), for some Vicodin.
His paranoid, erratic behavior frightens her. Then comes the eerie, diabolical grin that seizes a literally self-effacing Lewis, plunging Skye into an unpredictable abyss of gory grossness.
“Smile 2” touches on the figurative inhuman pressures of fame and stardom and how it feels to be stuck totally alone in a world devoid of trust and support.
Skye’s mother and manager (Rosemarie DeWitt) places a higher priority on business deals than her daughter’s health. Skye’s personal assistant (Miles Gutierrez-Riley) is Mom’s toadie. Skye has a best friend, Gemma (Dylan Gelula), but she hasn’t been heard from since the two split up in a bitter, drug-fueled fight.
Previous to “Smile,” writer/director Finn created two horror shorts, one of them, “Laura Hasn't Slept,” is clearly an inspiration here. Paramount Studios initially intended to release “Smile” on Paramount+ streaming. But test screening scores popped so high that Paramount booked it in theaters where it became an unexpected hit, compelling the studio to green light this sequel, and prompting Finn to remark, “I’d want to make sure that there’s a new, exciting, fresh way into it that the audience isn’t anticipating.”
He partially succeeds with “Smile 2,” a combination of inventively jumpy tricks with an overkill of visual and audio elements humming in sporadic horrific harmony.
As he did in “Smile,” Finn overdoses on turning the camera upside down, clumsily suggesting that Skye’s world has done the same. The succession of numbingly overloaded and increasingly dopey “it was only a dream” cheats wears thin.
Even classically trained Chilean composer Cristobal “Cristo” Tapia de Ve’s disorienting, ingeniously jolting mix of distorted music and shock-effect noise becomes diminished by bombastic overuse.
Moments of sly black humor and a dark sense of fun mitigate many of Finn’s frequent excesses. And Drew Barrymore’s guest shot as a talk-show host provides more than a hoot in a thriller that not only scares us, but makes us smile, too.
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Starring: Naomi Scott, Rosemarie DeWitt, Drew Barrymore, Lukas Gage, Ray Nicholson
Directed by: Parker Finn
Other: A Paramount Studios theatrical release. Rated R for drug use, language, violence. 127 minutes