Movie Review: Smile 2 (2024)
Synopsis: After a lengthy hiatus to both recover from injuries she sustained in a car accident that killed her boyfriend and to treat a drug addiction, popstar Skye Riley is ready to reboot her career by going on tour. Skye reaggravates her back injury and, since she knows no doctor will prescribe her painkillers because of her addiction, tries to buy Vicodin from a drug addict, Lewis, who she discovers in a state of panic before he smiles at her then kills himself. Soon after, Skye begins suffering from insomnia and hallucinations before learning she's been possessed by a demon that will destroy her sanity until she kills herself and infects another host.
Who's in it? The movie stars Naomi Scott, Rosemarie DeWitt, Miles Gutierrez-Riley, Dylan Gelula and Peter Jacobson.
Review: My wife and I had a date night last night and since I don't think either of us was enthused for karaoke, I suggested a movie date instead, the first since we saw Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny more than a year ago. We both enjoyed the movie Smile and while I wasn't overly certain Smile 2 would be worth the price of admission; we gave it a try.
It turned out to be a great choice because this ended up being one of the rare times I liked the sequel better than the original.
This movie has a whole lot of things working for it. For me, the biggest one was the way the film always continually built on the suspense. There are a ton of jump scares in the movie, which isn't something that always works. However, in this case, it created a feeling something could happen every time Skye (Scott) looked in a mirror or opened a door. Sometimes it did (at one point, my wife even screamed, and it was lucky I was holding the popcorn). Sometimes it was really gross. Other times, nothing happened at all.
On top of it, the film had a disorienting effect that made it seem even scarier, especially watching it at the theater. This was both the result of not knowing what was real and what was just an extended hallucination as well as some great camera work that, at least for me, added the feeling of motion sickness - not to the point I thought I was going to throw up but to the point I occasionally had to close my eyes to regain my bearings.
I did successfully predict how the movie would end when we were around the halfway point. However, there were quite a few twists and turns that made me doubt that prediction on more than one occasion as well as a few surprises I honestly didn't see coming, even though maybe I should have. That unpredictability made it an interesting film from start to finish as well as making it easy to explain away any continuity errors because Skye simply could have been imagining something that didn't line up.
Final Opinion: It probably would have helped to rewatch the first movie before seeing this one, especially in the beginning, but this turned out to be an entertaining and scary film on its own and, as I said before, might have even one-upped the original a bit. This is also one of the rare movies I'd recommend seeing at the theater for the added effect. Just make sure your bladder is empty because there are scenes that otherwise might make you wet yourself.
My Grade: A
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