Smile 2 movie review: Naomi Scott, Kyle Gallner starrer is a fairly crusty genre effort

In pic: Smile 2 poster

Film: Smile 2
Cast: Naomi Scott, Kyle Gallner, Rosemarie DeWitt, Lukas Gage, Miles Gutiérrez-Riley, Peter Jacobson, Raúl Castillo, Dylan Gelula
Director: Parker Finn
Rating: 3/5
Runtime: 127 min.

Smile 2 picks up right where Smile left off. It's six days later… and for those who haven't seen ‘Smile' it's not a problem because this sequel has a standalone story.

In the opening long-take shot itself writer/director Parker Finn calls attention to what he is all about. This disorienting story of a megastar experiencing mental health issues merges with the terrors of a communicable horror body invasion. The narrative is effectively horrifying even when it fails to deliver on consistency and tempo.

We follow the trail of the communicable entity at the center of the Smile universe. The victim of horror here is global pop icon Skye Riley (Naomi Scott), who is returning to the gruel of a performing artist after a period in rehab and a lengthy hiatus due to a gruesome car crash that left her mentally scarred and killed her actor boyfriend Paul (Ray Nicholson). About to embark on a new world tour, Skye is traumatized by increasingly terrifying and inexplicable events. Overwhelmed by the pressures of fame and the added horrors of possession, She is forced to face her dark past in order to regain control of her life before it spirals out of control.

The superstar protagonist is rarely alone, constantly surrounded by managers, hangers-on, assistants, fans, etc. Finn packs in characters that increase the threat perception for the megastar. Whatever happens to her happens in the full view of the public…Skye may not have touched booze or coke since her recovery, but her dependence on prescription painkillers because of her severe injuries from the crash, makes her seek out her old high school drug dealer who happens to have been infected by the demon in the opening sequence. The dealer Lewis (Lukas Gage) bashes his own head open with a 35-pound weight, and after, things begin to go haywire. Thereafter, Skye begins to have visions of Lewis as well as that of Paul and the ‘smiles' that indicate a demonic possession is not far off.

Finn creates visually dazzling sequences to fit in with the popular expectations of a megastar performing live - dazzling over-the-top costumes, dancers performing energetically highlighted by brightly colored lights and all. Interspersed with that are sequences laden with shocking gore. The disparate contrasts play on your mind.

Skye is in a waking nightmare, unable to tell the difference between the real and the imagined and Finn panders to that effect time and time again before withdrawing back to reality. As a result, even though Scott's performance is convincingly real, the audience fails to feel all that sympathetic towards her plight. Towards the end we start feeling cheated by the pointless trickery that Finn employs to put forward the addiction demon metaphor. ‘Smile 2' had a great concept but the repetitive overloads by Finn and team put a damper on the horror stakes.