It was a smiley time this Hallowe’en, with Smile 2 in the cinemas and Smile itself hitting streaming services to cash in on this. It’s been a quick turnaround for writer-director Parker Finn, who released his short film Laura Hasn’t Slept in 2020, built on it with the feature-length follow-up Smile in 2022 and turned out the second feature this year. In that short time, the Smile sequence has established itself as one of the most popular and celebrated horror franchises of the last decade.
Does it deserve this? Well, yes and no. There’s no denying that these films are effective shockers, combining psychological terror with body horror to unpleasant effect. Smile itself, though, doesn’t quite live up to the hype. Originally titled Something’s Wrong With Rose, aesthetically tied more to Laura Hasn’t Slept which it ostensibly follows from directly, with Caitlin Stasey reprising her role, albeit briefly, as Laura, so that she can pass on the (literally) nightmarish curse to psychiatric therapist Dr. Rose Cutter. While Laura has been haunted by a terrifying being that smiles at her from behind different faces, the unsettlingly wide rictus grin didn’t become the focus on the manifestations until the feature, hence the change to the punchier, more intriguing title. It makes for a good poster, too.
The best thing about Smile is undoubtedly its star, Sosie Bacon, who gives an impeccable performance as a woman whose sanity is slipping under constant assault. Focusing on a psychiatrist is a good move, putting her directly in harms way by exposing her to someone already plagued by the… I’m just going to call it the Smiley Thing. It also puts her in the unusual position of a horror protagonist of understanding the dangers to her sanity she is experiencing, making it all the more feasible how long she refuses to accept what is happening is real, and also intelligent enough to admit when she can’t deny the evidence in front of her any longer.
Rose has already experienced intense trauma due to witnessing her mother’s suicide as a child, her entire life revolving around mental illness. Trauma and guilt are at the heart of Smile’s story, with the Smiley Thing specifically channelling and transmitting through unbearably traumatic experiences. It forces its victims – perhaps hosts is a better word – to relive their most painful experiences, while visiting new horrors on them. It warps its victim’s perceptions, so that at no point do they, or the viewer, know whether what they are seeing is real. Most disturbing for Rose is how it enjoys appearing as the long dead, but most effective as horror is when it appears as the still living, taking its time before it reveals itself as an illusion, usually only when reality intrudes and Rose realises that the person she thought was in front of her is actually somewhere else entirely.
It's not as if Rose has it easy in her day-to-day life, having to cope with an overwhelming job at an understaffed hospital and a complex romantic situation – her fiancé (Jessie T. Usher) doesn’t understand her, while Joel, her ex (Kyle Gallner) frequently finds himself in her workplace in his capacity as a police officer. Worst of all is Holly (Gillian Zinser), Rose’s self-absorbed and materialistic sister. Yet you can sympathise with everyone who begins to turn on Rose as her mental health deteriorates, and she is accused of appalling acts that she can’t remember committing.
This is where Smile works best. Finn’s script perfectly captures the experience of declining mental health, as your own mind betrays you, putting you in a place where you can’t trust you perception, memory or actions. It paints the fear and heartbreak as the people closest to you find they can’t cope with the changes in you, who turn away as you need them the most – but also the relief and gratitude towards those who do stick by you and try to help.
The most effective moments are when Rose is made isolated and afraid by her distrust of her own reality. The grotesque smiles on the Thing’s various faces are disquieting, but it’s the moments where you realise that what you’ve been watching, what Rose has experienced, never happened, or happened in an entirely different way to how you thought. Unfortunately, the film relies too much on jump scares which, although they do their job, just aren’t as interesting, original or effective as the core horror of the story. Still, it’s all in service of the Smiling Thing’s process, as it uses these to continually wear aware at Rose’s nerves. The Thing acts as a generic horror movie shock jock a lot of the time, precisely because this helps its mission of driving its victim to the brink. And also just for the kicks.
I really like that there’s no explanation for what the Thing is. It’s clearly supernatural, and acts like a curse, passing on from victim to victim after no more than a week of pushing them to breaking point. Beyond that, we have no idea, although we do eventually glimpse its alleged true form (if it even has such a thing). Horrible though it is, it simply isn’t anywhere near as frightening as someone you thought was on your side slowly breaking out into that appalling grin.
So Smile works, largely down to the powerful central performance of Sosie Bacon, but it never quite reaches the penetrating horror it’s really going for. It’s also hard to avoid comparisons to other films with similar conceits, such as Ringu and It Follows, which gave us implacable, relentless phantoms before and did it better. Smile 2, though, is as much an improvement on its predecessor as that was on Laura Hasn’t Slept. It leans into the gore and violence far more than Smile, which would normally be the sign of a lack of imagination and faith in the story. Finn finds the right balance here, though, using revulsion in service of the psychological horror that plagues the new protagonist, Skye Riley.
Skye is a considerably less likeable main character, but remains compelling and believable. The multi-talented Naomi Scott is absolutely excellent in the role. She has the singing and dancing skills to make Skye a believable pop sensation, and also the acting chops to give an incredibly tense and sympathetic performance as Skye’s sanity goes through the wringer. It doesn’t hurt that Scott is one of the most beautiful actresses in the world, either.
Centring the sequel around a troubled pop star gives it an entirely different aesthetic to the first film. It’s altogether bolder and more colourful, another reason why the increased violence works: everything is heightened. Skye is altogether different to the selfless Rose; her trauma comes from the pressures of fame, her own self-centred lifestyle and her reliance on substance abuse, and the brutal car crash that has left her in physical and emotional pain. It’s no surprise when we find out that the crash was her fault, but the visions of waking up bloodied in the wreckage are among the most haunting in the film. Skye also has to deal with her mother (Rosemarie DeWitt) who has commodified her daughter and puts her career over her wellbeing (although as everything is seen through Skye’s perspective it’s entirely possible her mum isn’t nearly as hard-nosed in reality).
Also giving strong performances are Miles Gutierrez-Riley as Skye’s PA Joshua, and Dylan Gelula, Skye’s once best friend who has been out of her life since a particularly venomous attack by Skye in the lead-up to the accident. Smile 2 picks up a week after the first film, rather perfunctorily dealing with a loose end from that story, before fast-forwarding another week to pass the curse onto Skye as she is just starting to put her life and career back together. There’s the sense that Skye might finally be able to make herself into a better person if giving the right environment, but once the Thing latches onto her, her already shaky grasp on reality is broken.
While the gore is increased, it’s once again the psychological aspect of the Thing’s attacks that hit hardest. It’s more relentless this time round, with entire hordes of zombified, smiling avatars assailing Skye. (Nothing in the film is more terrifying than the little girl at the signing and photo-op, whose manic grin may make her the single creepiest child in horror movie history.) There’s a little more exploration of what the Smiley Thing is in the second film, but it’s all speculation and, importantly, every source of information is unreliable. The Thing seems to be learning from its victims as well, playing with them and their sense of reality more and more. There’s a sense that the entity is aware that it’s in a horror movie and is gleefully playing with the tropes that brings, and is fully genre-savvy. You realise as the film progresses that the Thing has always been in charge of the story.
Smile 2 takes the concepts of Smile further and with greater style. Smile 3 is already in the works; filming is set to start next year so it will likely keep the schedule going and arrive in 2026. It’s hard to see where else it can go beyond Finn’s own promise of “more off the rails;” there’s only so much gore and violence, and only so traumatic its themes can get, before it simply becomes another example of shock for shock’s sake. If he can deliver an improvement once again, though, then Smile 3 will be something very special indeed.
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