
Warning: This review contains spoilers.
“Smile 2” (2024) premiered on Oct. 18, 2024, continuing the terrifying chain of the Monstrosity’s victims. While this was a long-awaited sequel, it grossed $68.9 million domestically, much less than the $105.9 million domestically earned by its predecessor “Smile” (2022). Resuming with its eerie images and a dead Rose, “Smile 2” picked up where “Smile” left off — with Joel.
Played by Kyle Gallner, Joel’s exhaustion is shown in a close-up shot of his face in the opening scene as he plots how to pass the Monstrosity — the entity causing the terror — onto someone else. The Monstrosity is almost parasitic, and its hosts have hallucinations about others even though the entity is entirely real in the movie. Typically, the host is taken over by the Monstrosity after several days and they later take their life in front of someone else, making the unfortunate witness the new host. The only exception to this was when Robert Talley (Rob Morgan), the prisoner in “Smile,” was the host and took someone else’s life in front of a witness, making that witness the new host instead of him.
Joel, who formerly worked in law enforcement, plans to use Robert’s experience to transfer the Monstrosity to a criminal, protecting an innocent person from hosting it. However, a shoot-out kills the planned witness and a second witness is revealed from behind a table, causing Joel to become distraught. He says, “this wasn’t meant for you,” as he aims his gun at the accidental witness. A crowd of armed dealers sees Joel and questions who he is as he tries to leave, violently entering a dealer’s house in an attempt to find him as he escapes and runs for safety into the street; not long after, he is hit by a black truck.
Naomi Scott’s character, Skye Riley, is a famous musician and has a history of drug and alcohol abuse. Because of a previous accident she and Paul Hudson (Ray Nicholson) were in, Skye experiences recurring back pain. Paul Hudson was Skye’s popstar boyfriend; they had an argument while under the influence of cocaine, causing Paul to be killed in the accident when Skye grabbed the steering wheel and directed them off the road. Lewis (Lukas Gage), her drug dealer who she knows from high school, was the accidental witness to Joel’s failed murder attempt.
She reaches out to Lewis for consolation, and he tells her to come over. However, once she arrives at his apartment, he is paranoid, doesn’t remember texting her and threatens her with a sword. He calms down and invites her to sit on the couch, disappearing into a dark room. After a few minutes, he runs out screaming at an invisible entity to get away from him before falling on the ground and appearing to be choking. This scares Skye into thinking he is experiencing an overdose. He then stops and menacingly peers into her eyes with the iconic grin that “Smile” franchise fans hate to love. He stands up, grabs a 35 lb plate meant for a barbell and smashes it into his face until he barely has one, causing him to fall on the floor dead. Skye becomes traumatized and decides against calling for emergency services in tears.
When Skye returns home, she drinks from a VOSS water bottle — as she is seen doing several times throughout the movie to ground herself — and showers before going to sleep. As she tries to fall asleep, she sees a mutilated Lewis standing in her dark room.
As all hosts do, Skye experiences hallucinations. One scene that stood out to me was when she looked up from her phone and into the mirror in front of her to see Lewis standing behind her. She slowly moves side to side to see his face, but he moves with her, only allowing her to see herself. He then uses his fingers to shape her mouth into a smile, causing Skye to scream and jump away from the mirror. This scene is symbolic, representing the fact that his fate will soon be hers. No matter what she does or which way she goes, the entity will soon consume her — smiling the same smile and eventually traumatizing another when it compels her to kill herself … or others.
Struggling and lonely, Skye reaches out to Gemma (Dylan Gelula), her former best friend, who agrees to spend the night at Skye’s apartment so she can sleep soundly.
Skye’s experiences with the hallucinations are confusing to her and the audience. Some moments appear obvious, and other scenes may or may not be hallucinations due to the sinister smile not appearing on the hallucinations’ faces. Regardless, the movie leaves viewers frightened that it all might be physically happening.
One striking example of this is after she gets a concussion from hitting her head during a hallucination that causes her to see smiling fans chasing her in her apartment. She wakes up in a private wellness clinic with her mom by her side. Skye asks for her phone, demanding it once her mom declines her request. Her mom brings up that her tour is supposed to start the next day, which Skye insists on canceling. Her mother then yells at her and begins listing all the repercussions awaiting them if they cancel, such as being sued for millions and speculation from the media.
Skye yells at her mom, asking why that’s all she cares about. After her mom reprimands her, Skye says, “I wish you could feel what it’s like having to live inside my head.” Skye is met with the infamous smile, darkened eyes and an unfamiliar voice that says “I’ve tasted what’s inside your head.” Skye is then prompted to scramble out of bed and rip the IV from her arm as her mom breaks a mirror and starts stabbing herself with a large shard. Skye looks down to find the bloodied shard in her hand and her gown soaked in blood. This left me stunned and my jaw dropped, wondering if Skye really just killed her mother.
She flees the wellness clinic and is chased by law enforcement after grabbing and firing a security guard’s gun into the ceiling as a distraction. Once out on the sidewalk, she steps on glass shards and sees Gemma, who she takes along with her in the vehicle that she hijacks with the stolen gun. While Gemma is driving, Skye somehow gets a call from Gemma.
She cries, unable to believe the Monstrosity has manipulated her through her best friend, but she later regains control and is taken back to reality where she’s the driver. She drives to Staten Island, N.Y. where Morris (Peter Jacobson) is waiting for her. In the days after Lewis’ death, Morris texted her from an unknown number, telling her that she is not crazy and that she is not imagining any of her hallucinations. They met at a bar to come up with a plan: Safely stop Skye’s heart and resuscitate her after eight minutes, which they hope is enough time for the Monstrosity to leave.
They go through with the plan in an abandoned Pizza Hut freezer in Staten Island, where the low temperatures will decrease the rate of brain cell death. Morris leads her to a table where she will inject herself with a drug to slow down her heart until it flatlines after getting rid of the Monstrosity, explaining that he will bring her back by injecting adrenaline into it eight minutes after she flatlines.
Laying on the table in the freezer, blood drips onto her gown as she looks up and comes face to face with her injured body from the accident. This is the Monstrosity talking to her in her own skin and it unbuckles and falls onto her, knocking her onto the floor, dragging her by the hair and slamming her against the wall. Skye attempts to reach for a needle to stop the Monstrosity before hearing its inhuman voice growl, “Look at me.” Its eyes are huge and terrifying as they stare right at the audience. It grabs Skye’s mouth and opens its own to show several rows of teeth. Skye stares directly at the Monstrosity before biting its thumbs off and grabbing the syringe to inject herself with the drug to flatline her heart. It’s an intense, fast-paced fight that makes the audience root for Skye to be the second survivor of the Monstrosity or even the one to end it for good.
However, just as Skye begins to lose consciousness and her vision becomes blurry, she regains focus. The Monstrosity laughs in her face, tells her that none of this is real and suddenly the syringe has disappeared from Skye’s hand. This raises the question of whether or not it was Morris she met at the Pizza Hut, or if it was simply another hallucination. One thing is certain though: the Monstrosity most definitely out-Pizza’d the Hut. She tries to flee the freezer and the Monstrosity closes her in a capsule that sends her on stage in her tour outfit in front of thousands of cheering fans. As if that wasn’t already jarring for the protagonist and audience, among all the fans is her mom!
Suddenly, everything slows down.
Skye is now facing a duplicate of herself on stage, and this duplicate begins ripping herself open, starting at the scar on her abdomen from the accident. The Monstrosity emerges as a tall, harrowing, bloody and meaty entity with a long body, causing her to drop to her knees as it opens her mouth and attempts to crawl inside as it does with all the other hosts right before killing them.
Skye is now on the ground twitching and gasping for air as a concerned crowd watches, but then she gets up and the audience cheers. She faces them all silently with a smile on her face, and then … bam! Just like that, the crowd is shrieking because she’s smashing her face repeatedly with the microphone.
My jaw dropped a lot during this movie, and Skye smashing the gem-decorated microphone into her eye socket as the sound of the impacts echoed through the stunned crowd evoked the same reaction from me. I knew it was over for her once the Monstrosity entered, but I didn’t think I’d hear the microphone destroying her face progressively with each hit. It was a disturbing, gruesome scene — just like Lewis smashing the plate into his face, which made me physically cringe in my seat at the movie theater.
As Skye lies with a microphone lodged into her eye socket, this scene leaves us, the viewers, wondering: what now? Are thousands of people going to host the Monstrosity, or will it only choose one? I’m looking forward to finding out in what I hope will be the third installment.
Some of the craziest twists for me were the scenes I previously mentioned: Gemma being revealed as a hallucination and Skye holding the bloody glass shard that supposedly killed her mom, who was seen later at the concert. The latter was confusing, because I really believed that Skye killed her, but it made the film more enjoyable and not at all predictable.
Many people, including myself, were confused when we first saw the movie. It was difficult figuring out what was real and what was not. Yet, I think that’s what the director was aiming to do. By confusing us and distorting Skye’s reality, we, the audience, felt just as confused as Skye when objects would appear and then disappear or be revealed as non-existent. I think the artistry behind this is phenomenal. I thoroughly enjoyed the journey of watching “Smile 2.”
“Smile 2” is full of twists, turns and so much confusion. I’d like to give a round of applause to this movie, as well as a rating of 8.5/10.