We are going to see a number of high profile horror movies attempt to make their mark in October ahead of Halloween, and one of them is Smile 2, out tomorrow, October 18.
The horror film is a sequel to 2022’s Smile, in which a demonic presence infects people, causing them to smile creepily before committing violence and spreading to the next victim. It attracted a lot of attention for viral marketing which hired actors to creepily smile while frozen in place at places like baseball games, which made it to TV.
Now, Smile 2 is here and it’s reviewing quite well. A lot of reviews I’ve seen say it’s better than the original and improves in every way but…the numbers say it’s exact uh, 1% better than the original. Smile 2 is currently at an 81% on Rotten Tomatoes with no audience scores yet, and Smile 1 had an 80% with critics and a 77% audience score. Here are a few of the reviews:
- Bloody Disgusting: “It’s not just the sequel’s razor-sharp and inventive, gory scares that surpass its predecessor, but a profoundly complicated heroine shaping the edgier style of horror.”
- IGN Movies: “From the writer-director of the 2022 horror sleeper Smile comes a solid sequel that sicks the suicide-hex phantom on a pop star played — in a highly volatile, committed performance — by Aladdin’s Naomi Scott.
- The Wrap: “Smile 2 is more of the same. A lot more. But it’s just as scary, and this time it’s feistier and funnier, proving that the premise has legs and also some malleability.”
Smile 2
And here’s a negative one for a bit of balance:
- Kristomania: “What started out as an inventive little horror feature transforms into a boring, generic drama with a runtime so bloated you’ll start to wonder if everyone just forgot what kind of film they were making.”
That bloated runtime is two hours and seven minutes, which is admittedly on the higher end for a horror movie, though hardly that lengthy.
This is an interesting turn for actress Naomi Scott, best-known for her role as Princess Jasmine in the live-action Aladdin adaptation. Needless to say this is quite a switch for her to head to this genre. The original film did not have a very widely known cast, but it’s interesting to go back and see Kyle Gallner in there, who stars in what I would consider the best horror movie overall in 2024, Strange Darling.
I wasn’t the biggest fan of the original Smile. I thought it was fine, but kind of a poor man’s version of It Follows, and it’s probably outside of my top 100 horror movies of all time list (I have seen a lot of horror movies). I’ll probably check it out when it’s streaming, but given that it’s October and the first movie did well, I would expect this to perform solidly in theaters.
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