The new movie Smile 2 came out on October 18, 2024; this movie is a follow up from the last movie that came out on September 30, 2022, Smile. Back when the first Smile movie was being promoted, they managed to grab a lot of people’s attention with some easy but effective marketing stunts. People with creepy, unmoving smiling faces started popping up at various public events, most notably events like MLB games, staring directly at the camera, often wearing bright colored shirts to draw attention and to tie back to the film. The first Smile movie received mixed reviews, with some people saying it was well scripted, and other people saying it was extremely scary and graphic. For some people, Smile 2 is scarier than the 2022 Smile movie due to it pressing harder on the psychological horror and the jump scare aspects.

Smile 2 is about the global pop superstar named Skye Riley (Naomi Scott) that was just about to launch her massive comeback tour after some unplanned time away from the spotlight due to devastating car accident and some time in rehab. This caused her to become overwhelmed by all the demands and responsibilities of her career. Despite everything that happened to her, she still thought that she could have pulled it off and had a major comeback if it weren’t for the sudden traumatic event of her friend Lewis (Lukas Gage) killing himself in front of her one fateful night. Skye’s already fragile mental state rapidly started getting worse as she started hallucinating strange smiling people at her, as well as the mutilated corpse of Lewis everywhere she went. All of the trauma, depression, anxiety, self-loathing, and the pressure made Sky go crazy.

Director Finn’s style is very noticeable, as he changed his filming techniques between the two different movies. He fills his movies with so many intentional camera moves and placements, uses overbearing and unsettling sound design, and utilizes clever editing to help fully immerse the audience into each and every scare sequence that he makes. He’s writing for movies. It’s incredibly stylitics and it gives the watcher a better understanding of Skye’s head as she is falling apart. Finn’s returning partners for cinematographer, Charlie Sarroff, and editor, Elliot Greenberg, received major credit for how efficiently scary the movie is. One of the better aspects of the previous installment is Parker Finn’s workmanlike sense of craftsmanship. For example, the many upside down drone shots are derivative of other so-called “elevated horror” films, which means the story concept or premise takes down a basic concepts and adds a new twist or a new possibly ironic element to it; because of this, Smile has plenty to look at.

This time around, Finn has spent more time playing around with the form. Tracking shots, close-ups and zooms all contribute to a more pleasurable viewing experience. Finn has also shared how his childhood in the Midwest shaped his love for horror. “I was a movie-obsessed kid growing up in gloomy, Northeastern Ohio. It always kind of feels like Halloween there,” Finn said. This film also features a few jump scares and a lot of gore making this film one of the scariest films in 2024 hand in hand with the new film Terrifer 3 that came a few weeks before Smile 2, with the former scoring ten percent higher than the latter on Rotten Tomatoes’ review board. This is all following the success of the original, which grossed $200 million globally.

Sosie Bacon was the MVP of the first Smile, and Naomi Scott is just a great superior follow-up, put through an emotional and physical experience just to film the movie. ”She is going through a lot that I think people can relate to in a very unrelatable context,” Scott said. ”I think she feels isolated. She feels like people are looking at her, but not seeing her.” The relationship between actor Naomi Scott and Director Parker Finn was very beneficial during filming, since it was so strong. Scott said that she felt an instant connection with Finn during their first meeting, and described it as feeling like they were already working together, which was very noticeable in the film and made Smile 2 so successful.