Spoilers for “Smile 2” continue.
Inevitably, “Smile 2” is a remix of the original film directed by Parker Finn. “Smile” ended with Reed Rose (Sosie Bacon) succumbing to the curse. The Smiling Devil possessed her, killed her, and transferred her form to Rose’s ex, Joel (Kyle Gallner). After a cold opening that resolves Joel’s fate, “Smile 2” jumps to round two’s anti-heroine, pop star Skye Riley (Naomi Scott).
The original “Smile” was about a therapist figuring out his own mental health. By changing the main character, “Smile 2” takes on a new theme, but one that’s also as old as the movie itself. It’s the mental torture of fame. It’s impossible to watch Sky and not think about real female celebrities like Britney Spears who have been chewed up and spat out by tabloid media and impossible expectations.
Even before the Smiling Devil appears, Skye feels anxious, as if she is balancing on the top loop of a spiral. A recovering addict who barely survived a car accident, she is driven out on a redemption tour by her stage mom (Rosemary DeWitt).
Even after Skye leaves the stage, the cameras and the performance they capture are always on. At autograph sessions for fans, her smile (heh) looks more and more painful every time she has to talk to an annoying fan. Even if the demon doesn’t appear, she gets a real scare when her long-haired, spotted-skinned stalker confesses his “love” to her.
The story and scares of “Smile 2” feel like it owes a debt to the classic animated “Perfect Blue,” another horror movie about solving the mystery of a pop star. My praise for “Perfect Blue” is high, but I promise it’s not hyperbole. This is the best animated horror movie ever made, and frankly, one of the most surprising directorial debuts in cinema. All of Satoshi’s later films as director were great, but none of them struck me in quite the same way.
Mima, the protagonist of “Perfect Blue,” deals with a stalker and a reality crumbling around her, much like Skye. The scene where Skye is closest to her feels very shadowy with the color “Perfect Blue”.
Perfect Blue is the perfect pop star horror movie
Perfect Blue, described as if it had been made by Alfred Hitchcock and Roger Corman for Disney, begins with Mima as a Japanese pop idol in the three-piece girl band CHAM! . The group’s hit song “Angel of Love” is as much of an earworm as Sky’s “New Brain.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jueigKuwm4
Mima is naive (much more so than Skye). She is a beginner who listens to her managers and bosses with eyes wide open, afraid of disappointing them, rather than walking down a familiar path. So, despite her familiarity with pop music, she moved on to more adult ventures, including appearing in crime thriller TV series and nude modeling.
Her biggest fan, “Me Mania” (Masaaki Okura), does not understand this and decides to kill her to save the “real” Mima, his idol Madonna. It might be cheesy to call a movie “visionary,” but Perfect Blue deserves it. The film is a frightening depiction of how the internet has transformed fandom from long-distance adoration into obsessive parasocial relationships. When I first met Me Mania, he was watching Mima perform with CHAM! on stage. He reaches out and takes in her image as if it were a figurine placed on his hand. Because that’s the only way he sees Mima, even when his hands aren’t there.
Skye’s stalker isn’t that persistent, but the devil is making him look like one. As in the first film, the Smiling Monster can distort the perception of its victims and cause them to have complex hallucinations. One of Skye’s earlier and scariest incidents is when she is in her apartment. She noticed that each piece of discarded clothing was stretched out in the hallway of her dark bedroom. Then her naked stalker steps into the light, smiling (barely). He charges at a running Skye, and when she looks back, he’s gone.
one of the movies other A big set-piece happens in Skye’s apartment, and that’s when the Smiling Devils appear as a crowd. The crowd moves in sync like many-limbed beasts, grabbing Skye and beginning to tear her apart. The stalker is invisible, but recognizable by the red spots on his skin, and stretches his arm around her throat.
Perfect Blue and Smile 2 both tear reality apart.
In the end, it’s Sky who kills the fans. The movie ends with her going on stage when the demon seizes control and slams Skye in the face with a microphone, killing her and spreading its curse to a stadium full of people. The first “Smile” was one of the most brutal works in the horror canon, “which is actually about trauma.” The upshot is that our wounds will never fully heal and the fight against depression and mental illness is a losing battle. “Smile 2” carries that theme through. When Sky tries to conquer the demon, the demon boasts, “I’m in control.”
This leads to the final twist of the film, in which almost the entire third act is yet another hallucination. “Smile 2” relies on this trick far too often, and this twist goes too far, with the film unable to continue landing after a mostly steady flight. You end up wondering what was real, not because you’re restless, but because you’re confused. “It’s all just a dream” is often the meanest ending a storyteller can use.
“Perfect Blue” has some similar tricks. Some scenes are set up to be real, but turn out to be scenes within scenes from Mima’s star vehicle, “Double Bind.” About halfway through, the movie jumps (repeatedly) from scene to scene where Mima wakes up in her room. But beneath the twists of reality, “Perfect Blue” has everything falling into place. Once you understand what’s going on, it’s much easier to follow when rewatching. Although the two films share similar themes and settings, “Smile 2” struggles to surprise and satisfy audiences in a way that Kong’s films never can.
“Smile 2” is now showing in theaters.
