Tied Together with a SMILE 2

A confident directorial debut, Parker Finn’s Smile was one of the better uses for the recent trend in horror movies to find its fear in metaphors for trauma. It took as its symbolism a supernatural infection—an evil spirit that follows those who’ve witness a violent death, haunting them until they become the next violent death from which a witness will be followed. The link in the chain is visions of the smiling corpse, then smiling apparitions, then, finally, the victim smiling as they’re consumed by a compulsion to die. It’s creepy stuff, full of droning bass noises on the soundtrack, gliding upside-down establishing shots, and dark hallways and long silences—the better to punctuate with jump scares. But these trauma plots now border on cliche, so Finn wisely pivots his Smile 2. It’s not just about tragic backstory, but adds to its intimations of depression and suicidal ideation another form of modern mental anguish: fandom. His victim this time around is a star singer-songwriter (Naomi Scott) on the verge of launching her new world tour, giving this movie lots of sparkly outfits and speaker-rattling original (and pretty good!) pop music. (This makes it the second Eras Tour inspired chiller of the year; a double bill with Trap would be fun.) As the grueling prep to get back on the stage reaches its peak of costume fittings, dance rehearsals, meet and greets, and talk show interviews, she witness the sudden bloody death of her creepily grinning drug dealer (Lukas Gage, channeling Alfred Molina in Boogie Nights). There’s solid dread in knowing the shape of what she’s about to experience.

Her subsequent descent into dangerous madness is familiar to anyone who knows the pattern of the first film, but the trajectory’s images are given a new shivering valence as the normal screams and flashbulbs of a star’s life contrast with the total isolation of her downtime, and add eerie echoes of uncertainty. Then there are the outsized pressures of a manager mother (Rosemarie DeWitt) and zealous fans and record executives and choreographers and so on. They all expect so much from her, so she’s pushing herself to the limit mentally and physically even before the supernatural takes her over the edge. The rarified atmosphere of stardom is a good fit for Finn’s high-gloss imagery, and the slightly wider scope is part of the movie’s general one-upping of its predecessor. It’s just as committed to its lead character’s fraying psyche, keeping a close eye on her teeth-gnashing, wide-eyed bewilderment. But it’s also a longer, louder, gorier movie, more concussive in its jolts and dizzying in its hallucinations inside hallucinations. The ending keeps twisting until it gets somewhere both predictable and surprisingly satisfying in its grim logic and linger implications. It totally delivers on its premise.