Nothing to Turn the Frown Upside Down in ‘Smile 2’

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Rating: 1.0/5.0

CHICAGO – The sequel to the surprise horror hit “Smile” won’t give you anything to turn your frown upside down. It’s longer and gorier than the original, but it yields precious few surprises and is an ultimately pointless exercise in commerce and drudgery.

For those who skipped the original, an ancient metaphysical demon possesses its target via a big toothy grin from its latest victim. Then within one week it forces its new host to commit suicide in front of a witness, to continue the cycle. Our protagonist here is a troubled pop star (Naomi Scott) who makes Britney Spears look like the rock solid symbol of sanity. She’s recovering from substance abuse and a deadly car wreck that killed her boyfriend, plus is about to launch a world tour.

Smile 2
Photo credit: Paramount Pictures

She pops in to see an old high school classmate and drug dealer (Lukas Gage) to score some Vicodin for a nagging back injury … only to find him coked out of his mind and sporting that tooth grin of death. He then proceeds to bash his own head in with a weight, and the movie march to misery begins.

“Smile 2” doesn’t offer us one single thing we didn’t see last time around. Upside down camera angles? Check. Off-putting music? Check. Eerie grins that no longer hold the menace they did the first dozen times we saw them? Check. Switching our heroine to a pop star gives the film plenty of tired old cliches about controlling mom-agers and assorted hangers on. Naomi Scott mostly has to look freaked out as she’s troubled by visions while trying to get through the grind of dance rehearsals, fan meet-and-greets, awards show appearances and the like.

Writer director Parker Finn manages to deliver the lowest form of fright – the jump scare – on a couple of occasions in the story. But the movie is like a funeral dirge of drudgery otherwise. Every single person in the theater knows exactly how this is going to go. While it’s probably by design that we and Naomi S. can’t really tell what’s real and what’s in her head, especially at the end when there are all sorts of subplots just sort of shoehorned in.

Naomi Scott Puts on a Happy Face in ‘Smile 2’
Photo credit: Paramount Pictures

The most egregious of them is a suspicious E.R. nurse (Peter Jacobson) who claims he knows what’s going on with the curse. He has a plan to try to stop it, which involves medical procedures in an abandoned pizza hut freezer. This movie would be bad enough at horror quickie 90 minute length, however it commits the mortal sin of taking more than two hours to get to the inevitable conclusion.

Like most horror franchises, this film ends with the promise of more to come. With each successive entry in this series, that sounds more and more like a threat than a promise.

By SPIKE WALTERS Contributor HollywoodChicago.com spike@hollywoodchicago.com