“Smile 2” (2024) starts 6 days after “Smile” (2022) ends with the friend and cop, Joel (Kyle Gallner) desperately trying to free himself from the curse. As the evil entity’s next victim, either as himself or with the entity already possessing him, watches Drew Barrymore’s talk show on a flat screen television propped on an exposed brick wall, the viewer fixates on the interviewee, pop singing sensation Skye Riley (Naomi Scott), who apologizes to her supporters for failing them and promises never to do it again.  After cancelling her last world tour, Skye is under pressure to make sure that the show goes on, but it becomes increasingly hard as strange things keep happening around her. Will Skye keep her promise? Director and writer Parker Finn returns to the helm. Other than being a little too long with too many Voss water product placements, this close to perfect sequel is more unsettling and bleaker than its predecessor while also being a musical. Todd Phillips, director of “Joker: Folie a Deux” (2024) should take notes! 

While it is too early to classify Finn’s two films as a franchise, especially since this one raises the stakes so high that another installment seems impossible, “Smile 2” is consistent with the first in showcasing a talented, lesser-known actor who can convincingly carry an entire movie. Naomi Scott delivers the best 2024 performance as a world-famous performer, fictional or fact-based, which includes Saleka Shyamalan from “Trap” (2024). On stage, Skye is a driven performer determined to reclaim her rightful place on stage. She resembles a young Madonna if she was born later and came to fame in the twenty-first century instead of the Eighties, but she displays the aesthetic of Lady Gaga. Skye looks like a star. While I did not leave the movie feeling compelled to buy the soundtrack, I enjoyed the performances. Scott does her own vocals.

One of the film’s many heartbreaks is how no one knows how hard it is for her to do her job or how alone she feels while doing it. Skye is not a case of poor little rich girl. “Smile 2” conveys a sympathetic, tortured soul who really did not need help falling apart. It may be possible that her life story is sadder than Rose Cotter (Sosie Bacon), the doomed therapist from the first film. Skye has plenty of people in her life, but no one whom she feels offers unconditional, nonjudgmental acceptance. Her mother, Elizabeth (Rosemarie DeWitt), is her manager. Her assistant, Joshua (Miles Gutierrez-Riley), is hard-working, dependable and pleasant. She is estranged from her best friend, Gemma (Dylan Gelula). Lewis Fregoli (Lukas Gage) is more of a business associate than a friend from high school. The man who bank rolls her career, Darius (Raul Castillo), is one of the few people able to bring a genuine smile to Skye’s face. The entitlement that people direct over her body, time and image groom Skye into becoming the perfect target for the still unnamed evil entity. Unlike most of its victims, Skye cannot even try to avoid people to protect herself.

Skye lives alone in an apartment that would suit the pages of the latest issue of “Architectural Digest,” but it is filled with shadows and may be the worst place for a demon to torment her. Like the apartment in “The Substance” (2024) and the house in “House of Spoils” (2024), horror is developing this interesting visual vocabulary of accomplished women outside the public eye. These homes are not places of refuge, but torment and isolation. Beds appear inviting to touch, but leave its host staring at the ceiling, into the camera, exiled from rest and tormented. Bathrooms become cold, cavernous places lit like an operating theater and just as large to invite spectators. “Psycho” (1960) and “The Shining” (1980) may still exhibit the deadliest bathroom of all time, but these twenty-first century bathrooms seem impossible to warm with the steam from a shower and just act as a personal theatre where its owner finds herself lacking after assessing herself. Finn’s composition and camera movement make it seem as if every corner of Skye’s home holds the potential for danger. 

If you are expecting more information on the evil entity behind “Smile 2,” you will be disappointed. The same ground is covered just on a larger scale, and the rules are the same. Skye only has three options: get possessed and appear to commit suicide, kill someone and have someone witness it, or live in isolation while going mad. Morris (Peter Jacobson) offers a fourth option, suicide before possession, but anyone with the slightest knowledge of the human body knows that while life is fragile, it is incredibly difficult to successfully kill yourself. In more germane science fun facts, neurologists claim that the brain cannot create new faces so in a dream, every face, even if unknown, is someone seen before. Maybe the same concept applies to Skye’s predicament, which means that as a woman accustomed to seeing swarms of people, she has an overabundance of fodder for her supernaturally induced hallucinations, which includes Ray Nicholson’s character, actor Paul Hudson, who looks like he just left a New Year’s Eve party at the Overlook hotel, which is not an accident. He is Jack’s son, which I did not know going into the movie.

Though perfectly executed and bone deep scary even when jump scares are expected, “Smile 2” falls short of the first movie because returning moviegoers already know what is happening. The residue of the film will not leak into your everyday life. After the first film, I obsessed about the story and its implications, but because this film covers the same ground, it is easier to move on…..

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But not entirely possible. The entire movie depicts Skye’s delusion. Unlike Rose, she never had anyone to confide in. Morris and the forgiving, ride or die version of Gemma are not real. To the outside world, Skye appeared to be going through the motions so she could make it to the tour, the evil entity could possess her then infect everyone, which I predicted going into the movie, which may explain why the denouement did not leave me reeling unlike the first film. It also means that whatever little mythology Skye learned, the evil entity wanted her to know it. Knowledge and resistance are part of the possession process. Skye also never reconciles with her past, which reveals troubles with substance abuse, a verbally abusive boyfriend and a failed suicide attempt, which led to Paul’s death. If you want an in-depth analysis of the process, I already covered that ground in my review for “Smile” in the spoiler section. You can just mentally cut and replace parallel situations. 

There is one crucial difference. “Smile 2” introduces the possibility that this phenomenon may not be supernatural. Skye suffered from trichotillomania, a hair-pulling disorder, but may have another mental health issue. If I had not read IMDb’s trivia section, I never would have connected Lewis’ last name with the Fregoli delusion, which I am unfamiliar with. It is a type of delusional misidentification syndrome in which a person knows that they are seeing different people but believe that those different people are actually a specific persecutor disguised as different people like the evil entity in the movie. Several causes could be responsible: use of Levodopa, a medication to treat certain diseases, a traumatic brain injury or brain lesions. 

So in the beginning of “Smile 2,” technically the evil entity should not have passed down because a car runs Joel over, which was very “Final Destination” coded. How did Lewis get infected? I could not tell, but was he the guy who witnessed Joel kill the brothers? If he is not, then it feels as if the movie is telling another story, which could leave room for a sequel and would render the detour exclusively about mental illness. Personally, I prefer the supernatural explanation, but then a sequel feels impossible because would not the whole world be dead in a week because the possession would reach global pandemic levels? So a sequel would not necessarily open on apocalyptic world with everyone breaking from reality, but only those who were more vulnerable because of prior trauma. Unfortunately if the mentally health disorder interpretation is correct, then Rose’s story is retroactively more tragic since she is a doctor who cannot heal herself, abandons a life of knowledge and retreats then dies into a world of fictional superstition.