The reason Smile is one of the best horror films of the 2020s, or maybe of the last decade, is because of how it personifies mental health into a terrifying entity that can spread from one person to another. I suppose you could say it’s a “smilely transmitted disease.” Okay, revoke my pun privileges, but I thought that was pretty decent when I came up with it. What Smile 2 does is essentially expand its universe and scale up in all ways possible. It’s visually more glamorous, definitely not an indie film, and even the scale of the reach of the entity is now very different from in the first film. This is because it’s latched onto a shocking target—a pop star (whoops). In theory, this film sounds fantastic. I also think there are a lot of ways the film gives us some really intense messaging about trauma. However, because it’s about a pop star, and I can’t attribute this to anything else, it does become a little bit comical. Maybe it was the audience I watched it with that just couldn’t take it seriously, or maybe it was just the presentation of it that fell flat in terms of scares, unlike the first film. But, that’s beside the point, so without further ado, let’s quickly dive into the details of Smile 2.
Spoiler Alert
How Does Skye Riley Become The Host?
Now if you haven’t watched the first film, a quick refresher is important to understand Smile 2. The film begins with Joel, who became the host 6 days earlier after he watched his ex-girlfriend light herself on fire. He’s been hit by the trauma of watching her die, and now he needs to transmit the entity or die. To transmit this entity, Joel has to kill somebody and have somebody else watch him do it so that they get traumatized by the sight and the entity can latch onto their trauma. Joel decides to pass it on to a criminal because he’s a police officer; it’s already immoral for him to kill somebody, never mind an innocent person. Now, in this brilliant one-take (in my opinion one of the best scenes of the film), Joel holds a man named Yev (don’t know which of the brothers was called what, so we’ll make do) at gunpoint. He gets Yev to take him inside the house where Yev’s brother Alexi sits figuring out his drugs. Joel then murders Yev with a knife in front of Alexi, but the latter has a gun and starts shooting at him. In self-defense, Joel shoots him back and accidentally kills the guy. This leaves Joel completely devastated and afraid; however, to his surprise, there’s another man in the room, a drug dealer named Lewis who happened to see everything that went down, which means Joel’s now passed on the entity to him. You think it’s done with him now, no? Wrong. More people show up at the house, and while trying to run away from the incoming mob, Joel ends up getting run over by a massive truck, and that’s when the title card rolls in, with a bloody smile on the screen formed by Joel’s carcass being dragged by the truck (yeah, this one’s far gorier). Turning that frown upside down, Smile really focuses on everything that we hide behind our pearly whites.
I tell you this whole thing because Joel’s death, or rather what he did, is directly connected to Skye becoming the next host. See, because the drug dealer saw what Joel did, he caught the entity. Now, if you remember in the first film, the psychiatrist had experienced past trauma because she watched her mom die in front of her. For Skye, we have to rewind a year back, when she was abusing drugs and alcohol and almost died in a car accident. Her boyfriend at the time, Paul Hudson, unfortunately did die, and she obviously saw that. As if this isn’t too much to handle on its own, Skye’s also a Grammy award-winning popstar, so the pressure on her is intense. In the present day, i.e., one year after the accident, Skye’s back on her two feet and back on stage, but scarred for life. Even the scars she has on her body look like smiles, especially one on her knee. An interesting detail, I’d say. Anyway, because Skye has a history of drug abuse, she can’t get Vicodin prescribed, so she goes to our guy Lewis for it. It’s already been like 4 days since Lewis witnessed Joel’s handiwork, and so you can imagine, it’s time for him to take his own life in the most atrocious way in front of somebody. This somebody happens to be poor Skye. This is crazy timing, because Skye is just about to go on a world tour, and it’s like her second and final chance ever to prove herself (I mean, if she’s won a Grammy she already has, but okay). Love that Drew Barrymore cameo though, original scream queen, amirite?
How Much Of What Skye Experiences Is Real?
After Skye watches this man smash his own face in with a barbell weight, things obviously start to get crazy. She doesn’t call the police because she can’t be associated with drugs. We as an audience are as befuddled as Skye herself, never knowing what is real and what is not. But, don’t worry, the film does a good job handholding, and by the end of the film, we mostly have all the answers we need. First, Skye reaches out to Gemma, her ex-best friend. Gemma and Skye had a falling out a year ago, around the time of the accident, and haven’t spoken since. From the looks of it, Skye was the bad guy, and she feels really guilty for what she did. This guilt is what the entity plays on. We are made to believe that Gemma spends the night at Skye’s after she calls her and apologizes; however, I think everything from this moment is not actually happening. It’s all in Skye’s head. I think the one incident that really happened was when Skye was supposed to talk during a fundraising event about how music inspires hope. She’s a complete mess at the event, and despite telling her mother she doesn’t want to do it, Skye’s put in a fancy dress and made to stand on stage. The teleprompter stops working, and Skye says some honest things about what it’s really like to be a pop star, which doesn’t sit well with the audience. However, when it does stop working, the prompt reads “Paul Hudson” as the next guest, making her completely freak out. The old woman on stage with her tries to help, but Skye, who sees a smiling Paul in front of her eyes, aggressively pushes her off the stage thinking she’s him (yikes).
Anyway, this leads to a Skye spiraling out, but she’s also receiving messages from an unknown number about Lewis’ death. I guess all of Skye’s behavior could easily be attributed to drug abuse; the way she’s erratic and “not in control” is how one feels when heavily drugged. I think that’s the parallel the film’s trying to draw. How these people are not in control and just need help. There’s even a scene that closely parallels the one in Talk To Me, and I can see the merging themes clearly. Now the person who is messaging Skye asks her to meet him at a bar. She’s obviously afraid to meet him alone. This is another thing that I believe actually happened, because Morris tells Skye about the lore of the entity and how his brother died of it, 8 victims before her. He also mentions the psychiatrist Rose Cotter in the sequence and how he’s been trying to save people ever since he believed his brother after the guy killed himself with a crowbar. Morris explains to Skye how she can stop the cycle if she dies before the entity kills her. Sounds easy enough, no? I’m kidding. Obviously, she thinks he’s insane, asking her to die, and he explains how they can stop her heart and then resurrect her when she’s fully “free.” Skye goes back home to a whole group of smiling faces. I suppose because she’s always in the public eye, she sees herself more as a spectacle, which is why this scene is so impactful. Then they grab onto her, and it’s almost like one of her dance sequences until she’s unconscious.
Okay, the whole wellness center scene is in Skye’s head, which was actually quite a twist even for me (I like to pretend I can predict horror movies, okay?). It looks as if Skye’s finally so frustrated with her mother, who wants to send her straight back on stage even after she’s been dying mentally for the last 4 days, she decides to give it back to her. The conversation makes us realize how difficult it is for pop stars with parents for managers. All of Skye’s complaints sound like a cry for help. So Skye watches her mom kill herself, only to see the piece of mirror she used in her own hand. Then she manages to escape the wellness center somehow by grabbing a gun from an officer. She tries to steal a stranger’s car, but Gemma shows up and tells her she’ll go with her because Skye doesn’t know how to drive.
While they’re driving away and Skye is messaging Morris to go ahead with the plan, she gets a call from Gemma. See, Gemma never visited Skye, because she never forgave her, and the entity was just pulling her leg. Skye tells herself that she’s in control, trying to get herself back together, and then finds herself in the driver’s seat of the car. It’s like if she had two identities, and one took over her mind from the other. Skye then drives to Morris, and he takes her inside the freezer of a Pizza Hut. This is where he plans on doing the procedure. Morris leaves Skye for a bit to go check on something, but by this time, the entity makes a comeback. This time it’s taken her form, but on the day of the horrific accident, with her fractured knee hanging out of her skin and everything. Now this is an elaborate scene of Skye fighting Skye, and it’s the entity reminding her of all her past traumas, basically how nobody likes her and how she’s a horrible person. I guess Skye’s biggest fear is everyone hating her and her ruining everybody’s life because she became too selfish from stardom. Plus, all celebrities must be liked. Eventually, though, Skye decides to inject herself with the heartstopper, only to learn that none of the stuff that just happened was true.
During Smile 2’s ending, the entity pushes Skye into a wall that looks like a ribcage. This is actually a set on her stage, but it also made me feel like this is how trapped Skye feels inside herself. Anyway, the next thing you know, Skye’s on stage, and her mom’s alive, and all her fans are overjoyed to see her. When she looks straight ahead of her, she finds herself in the same costume, which she didn’t want to wear (another sign that when she said she didn’t want to show people how ugly she is was probably not real as well). The fake Skye then rips open the scar on her stomach, making sure we know that trauma never goes away, just like the scar is never fully healed, and the monstrous smiling entity comes out of the stomach. It then opens up Skye’s mouth and enters her. The point of view then changes to the concert hall, where audiences are shocked to see Skye choking on the floor of the stage. You already know what’s coming next. We get a full shot of the people standing directly in front of the stage as Skye stands up and gives them a wide smile. We don’t actually see her ram the microphone into her eye because it’s even scarier when you see how people keep watching on in horror rather than looking away or trying to do something. A bloody spectacle, if you will.
Smile 2’s ending doesn’t really give us any solids about the entity or how to get rid of it. I suppose it’s setting us up for another sequel. I am a bit disappointed that we didn’t get more lore, and it would’ve been nice to see Skye survive, but I guess trauma is really too hard to let go of. I guess if there’s another Smile movie, then it’ll be on an even larger scale (giving “Human Centipede” vibes). I don’t know if another film will do the franchise good if they don’t find an actual way to get rid of the entity. I did enjoy this film a lot, specifically for Naomi Scott’s acting, and the way the shots are played with is still just as fun on a bigger scale.
Related
This post was originally published on here
