[Nicolai P. Zwar]

SMILE 2 (Parker Finn, 2024)
I’ve never fully decided whether I like horror movies. Really. I don’t know. I’m not a “slasher” film guy, and I don’t enjoy watching gory or brutal scenes. I saw TERRIFIER and found it despicable. I don’t want to return to it…. and here’s the next thing: what I do know is that I hate horror franchises. At least most of them. Because one of the surest way to lose me in the first ten minutes is the laziest sequel move in the playbook: drag back the survivor from the first film, give him or her one more scene, then kill him or her off at the beginning. Oh please, how lame can you be? (Ok, DAMIEN – OMEN II did exactly that and did it well, but it’s an exception. Not that the movie is necessarily great, but at least in that movie, the scene served to tie the sequel to the previous one.)

Anyway, SMILE 2 opens exactly like that. Hey, there’s the dude from the last movie (don’t even know his name without looking it up, which I won’t because I’m to lazy and just want to have this typed before I go to bed). Anyway, it’s been a while that I’ve seen SMILE. I liked that movie, it was original and quite spooky. So back to the opening scene for SMILE 2: What’s it about? The surviving guy from the first movie getting killed. Sheesh. And it’s so well-executed I enjoyed it. The sequel managed to engage me in an edgy, tight 7 minute (didn’t time it) opening sequence before the title credits… Chapeau! That scene was really good.. and set up the rest of the movie… so far, I’m in.

Because here’s the thing: this is a very well crafted piece of schlock. The atmosphere is genuinely oppressive. The tension is surgical. The central performance by (what’s that name of the actress? Naomi Scott? Never heard of her… but I will remember her now) is superb, really… it belongs into a movie with actual things to say. Not sure this one has, but it’s definitely well made. But underneath all of it it’s basically a ghost-train ride. Spooky corridors, jump scares, superbly choreographed (literally) jump scares… but nevertheless jump scares… in service of… not much. But hey, I was spooked.

I can rewatch THE SHINING endlessly (one of those horror films I really love) and find new things to think about. SMILE 2 is a “Geisterbahn”: brilliant engineering… but did it mean anything? Maybe somewhatish… The struggle of drug addiction, hallucination, what’s real and what isn’t was at least present in the film, so it was “above average”. Yep, definitely above average. Not sure if it was really good.. will have to sleep and ponder over it. But yeah, as a horror movie, it delivered, it was more nightmarish and engaging than most movies of its kind. Original setting to. What if a famous pop star gets haunted by a vicious demon out to mentally destroy you, and even with all your fame and fortune and people around you, you have no one to turn to who can really help you. That part of the movie is something I can lock on to, I liked that… so maybe it wasn’t so bad a movie after all.