Parker Finn's 2022 feature film debut, Smilewas transparently formed from chain possession horror The ring And It followsin which a killing curse is passed from one victim to the next as the tormented protagonist attempts to free himself from it. Despite its familiarity, the film worked, in part because the writer-director brought a lot of style and sustained fear to the derivative premise, but also because the delivery was so disturbingly ordinary – a wide, toothy grin. The film cost a modest $17 million to produce and grossed more than $200 million worldwide, making a sequel inevitable.

Cut to Smile 2in which Sosie Bacon's clinical psychiatrist is swapped for Naomi Scott's Skye Riley, a global pop superstar full of trauma for the dark being to feast on. That means a shift from a main character whose professional training and difficult personal history gave her some insight into her confused state, to a Katy Perry-Lady Gaga hybrid who's so nervous he barely stands a chance. But that doesn't mean the well-acted film isn't fun, hitting you with a barrage of effective jump scares and blood-soaked visions. But it does mean abandoning restraint in favor of bigger, bolder excesses. Any film that is particularly credited with “monstrosity effects” does not rely on subtlety.

Audiences that loved it the first time around will likely come back for more, which should give Paramount a head start at the Halloween box office. If Smile 2 is another hit, don't be surprised if the franchise continues, especially since this one ends with the promise of contagion on a much larger scale.

Just six days after the events of the first film, Finn begins the action as nice cop Joel (Kyle Gallner) sits trembling in fear in his parked car, having paid the price for helping his troubled ex-girlfriend. Determined to remove the curse responsibly, he slips on a balaclava and enters the home of two murderous drug dealer brothers, intending to kill one while letting the other watch before sealing the second guy's fate. by putting on a happy face.

This plan goes as far as it can go in the wild pre-title sequence, which is bad news for Lewis (Lukas Gage), the low-level dealer who gets caught up in the chaos. The macabre sense of humor prevalent throughout is evident in the remains of a victim, whose blood and entrails are smeared across the street in the shape of – you guessed it – a smile.

Meanwhile, Skye prepares to return after a year out of the spotlight following a near-fatal car accident that killed her actor boyfriend Paul (Ray Nicholson). Photos of her consuming alcohol and cocaine are all over the tabloids, but now she's clean and ready for a major tour that begins in New York City. She gives her first public interview since the accident The Drew Barrymore Showwhose presenter seems only slightly embarrassed herself.

Pushed by her manager mother Elizabeth (Rosemarie DeWitt) and pampered by her adoring assistant Joshua (Miles Gutierrez-Riley), Skye throws herself into rehearsals. When the powerful choreography aggravates her back injury from the accident, she keeps it to herself but contacts her former dealer to snag some Vicodin. That would, of course, be Lewis, an old high school acquaintance who's coked up to the brim and gripped by paranoid delusions when Skye arrives. What she sees is truly disturbing and leaves her with no painkillers but a lot of pain.

The craft of filmmaking is a significant advance here Smilewith returning DP Charlie Sarroff cleverly using confusing angles and mirror shots, turning the picture on its head again as Skye begins to unravel. There's a hint of De Palma in the moody lighting and creepy sped-up zoom-ins as she begins to see menacing visions of strangers and people she knows, their faces transformed by the Joker's grin.

Dan Kenyon's dense sound design is another highly effective component, often blurring the lines between ambient noise and composer Cristobal Tapia de Veer's eerie score, which contains clanging, groaning, jerky industrial sounds and leans heavily toward distortion.

Scott is great at showing how Skye's horror spills over into her feelings of guilt towards the people she hurt as her drug problems spiral out of control. This conflict also makes her want to continue fulfilling her professional obligations of photo shoots, sound checks, costume fittings and other rehearsals.

Despite her daughter's escalating series of meltdowns, Elizabeth urges Skye to stick to the schedule, reminding her that the record company, led by Darius (Raúl Castillo), has invested millions in the tour. “You need to stay hydrated,” her mother repeatedly tells her, leading to an amusing joke about the ongoing product placement as Skye downs endless bottles of Voss water.

A standout early scene is a fan meet-and-greet, where Joshua manages a long line of enthusiastic admirers, leading them one by one to get an autograph and a photo. Skye is initially warm and patient with them until she is frightened by a crazy possessed man. (It won't be the last time she sees him, at least not in her head.) No sooner has she regained her composure than a teenage girl with pigtails walks into the front row, revealing her braces with that unmistakably maniacal grin that haunts Skye's dreams And their waking hours.

The uncertain back and forth between what is real and what is a very visceral hallucination eventually becomes a weakness as the story progresses, even if some of the latter sequences are virtuoso set pieces.

Of particular note is a breathtaking film in which Skye sees the dancers in her show gathered in the doorway of her apartment with lecherous smiles. Every time she looks away to make sure it's just her imagination, they come closer, straddling the furniture and climbing the walls like demonic Fosse choir children. As they approach her, their movements become violent echoes of the choreography we saw in rehearsal.

Another key sequence is a “Music Inspires Hope” fundraiser for underprivileged youth, where Darius persuaded Skye to be a presenter. Freshly traumatized but unable to break free, Skye unsettles the gala audience by cheering them on when the teleprompter malfunctions, and her speech about the harrowing side of the music industry proves anything but hopeful. The inconvenient appearance of her dead boyfriend, smiling like a madman, doesn't help her.

Skye finds temporary solace as she mends a broken bond with her best friend Gemma (Dylan Gelula), whose droll reactions to terrible revelations (“Eww”) make you wish we saw more of her. Then there are the anonymous text messages from someone who seems to know exactly what Skye is going through. Eventually it turns out that he is Morris (Peter Jacobson), who knows exactly what the parasitic spirit is and has a theory about how to neutralize it.

As Skye fights back and then, in desperation, agrees to try Morris's dangerous removal method, Finn begins to lose the grip of the narrative. The film continually fluctuates in reality in ways that are clearly intended to reflect what Skye is experiencing. But the more frequent the shifts become, punctuated by interludes of increasingly bloody violence, the more discouraging they become.

While Scott is always compelling, a famous, wealthy pop icon is already a less sympathetic protagonist than the first film's grounded therapist, whose race against time to understand and overcome her suffering gave way Smile the structural foundations of a process. Skye is a wreck from the moment of their fateful contact, and watching an unstable protagonist fall victim to terror in a world where almost nothing seems real is less compelling than watching someone actively fighting for her survival fights.

As the sequel descends into the grotesqueness of Grand Guignol in Skye's ultimate ordeal, it becomes less scary and more distant. The elements that made Smile Things that get under your skin are sacrificed to gory spectacle, and the relative simplicity of the conceit is tarnished as the film pushes past the two-hour mark.

Smile 2 confirms that Finn is a gifted visual stylist who has a sure hand with his actors. Maybe he just needs to let go of the misconception that more is more and focus more on his story skills. Still, there's a lot to be said for a director so devoid of coyness, and the sequel will have many horror fans grinning from ear to ear.