There’s something inexorable about the way Smile 2 unfolds- a path that can’t be avoided or resisted. In the first Smile, everything seemed like a remake of a J-Horror film; a closed system that no one can escape from, with death the end result for all involved parties. It had a fatalism that feels at odds with the traditions of American horror, and it traffics in a very specific kind of cruelty- think Candyman ‘92 or In Dreams, where the protagonist’s very life is disassembled with nothing left. And Skye Riley (Naomi Scott), the pop princess at the center of the latest Smile, has so much built up and we’re gonna watch it all burn.
I’m not sure what writer/director Parker Finn’s endgame is, but I’ve got to respect someone who, when given heaps of money after a surprise hit, decides it’s time to tell a sensitive and relentless story about how pop stars are people too. There’s a surprising amount of Brady Corbet’s Vox Lux in here, some thoughts about the way that recovery works for different folks, a bit of Halloween III, and a dark, dark focus on how easily we construct our lives to be disassembled. (It goes without saying that this film sets the bar high for that upcoming riff on Faces of Death with Charli XCX.)
It’s hard to get a feel for the moral space these films are taking place in- because this demonic presence is so absolute in its destruction, it seems rather egalitarian. But the circumstances by which Skye finds herself witnessing a grotesque suicide seem exactly like the stick some folks would beat on victims with, so it’s hard to say. Let’s just acknowledge the idea that people with past histories of substance abuse are just not allowed to feel pain beyond a certain threshold is grotesque, and it sounds like the kind of sicko power fantasies that a lot of people who really have no business in politics just love to indulge in.
The Smile Demon (not its official designation, and in a way it’s kind of impressive that we’ve gotten two of these films and no one is in any rush to explain or define its situation) has the meticulous attention to detail and utter contempt for humanity of Jigsaw from the Saw films, but also the reality-bending flourishes of a Freddy Krueger. And while this frees its malign tendencies up to just lay waste to every relationship and tie around the subject of its focus, it’s also got a sick, gaslighter edge for a last minute reveal that not everything that the cast (and audience) has suffered is in fact real.
It’s a specific kind of upsetting that horror seems to play very delicately with. Not so the Smile films- there’s nothing delicate here. Nothing ever escapes whatever is at play, and in a sense, it’s probably well-suited to the idea of horror as metaphor. Because just going on these films, this is how humanity dies, and that’s seriously hardcore for a film with this many quality pop songs (personal faves- “New Brain” and “Blood on White Satin”) and production numbers. There’s no hope at all to be found here, and it grinds you down a bit. I mean, even Art The Clown at least has a nemesis…
There is something cathartic about the world that Finn has created with these films. In a way, they’re heirs to the legacy of the Final Destination series, in that who you are as a person means absolutely nothing in the face of the death that comes for us all. You can be a well-meaning friend brought back into the orbit of someone you’d almost given up on but just couldn’t. You could be the source of support who has put everything into stasis and stability. You could be the old High School acquaintance who likes to party. And this unspeakable horror will take you down as well, either as collateral damage or by making you a witness to its destructive habits and then its next host. It’s bleak.
If you see a performer that you like has been cast in one of these films, it’s a weird feeling, because they’re going to die, and horribly. (Poor Lukas Gage, the Cat King himself, can’t even catch a break- gotta live freaky, gotta die freaky when you’re in a Smile.) Naomi Scott is pretty great as doomed pop icon Skye Riley, and she acts, sings, dances, screams, and cries up a storm. It’s an incredible performance that gives both the elegance and discipline of Black Swan and the stylized fatalism of Dancer in the Dark. And it’s in service of a film that takes its time to destroy you utterly.
The score, deeply effective and weird, paying homage to some of the tonalities in Annihilation, at times a collage of sampled screams and sighs, keeps you off balance. The frame, wont to invert its perspective as the viewer careens through this serrate vivisection. And there’s an ending that you can feel coalescing into being throughout Smile 2, something monstrous on a level that feels like what’s happening to us all, the way we’ve all become witnesses to something that overwhelms the meager defenses we have left after the past decade, and Finn has the guts to go with it, both in what we see and the overwhelming horror of What Happens Next. And I shudder at the thought.
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