It feels strange to start a new year off with a paean to a horror movie, but one of my resolutions for 2025 is to honor that which has, in my mind, been drastically overlooked.
Just kidding, I don’t believe in New Year’s resolutions. They seem silly to me.
What’s genuinely NOT silly, however, is Smile 2, Parker Finn’s 2024 horror masterpiece. I have to admit, I was not a fan of the first Smile movie, and probably turned it off 20 minutes in or so (as previously mentioned in this column, I can’t usually get family and friends to accompany me to the theater to satisfy my horror itch; if any friends and family are reading this, you’ve been put on notice).
Smile 2, however, contains one of 2024’s best on-screen performances, with a beautifully nervy Naomi Scott who oscillates between vulnerable and cruel. As cursed pop star Skye Riley, Scott has a touch of both Lady Gaga and Keisha — not to mention the way both the script and her performance combined to create some truly great commentary on the way musicians are frequently wrung out dry by their controlling parents, à la Britney Spears.
Scott’s performance would be cheapened if we examined it solely as a collection of pop star metaphors, though. She’s playing a rich, successful bitch — but also Skye’s a bitch precisely because she at one time thought that success would introduce balance to her inner life.
You can’t help but feel for Skye, even if her public redemption arc is, without introducing spoilers, full of lies. And that’s because the world she inhabits cannot exist without a lie at its center, like a black hole at the center of a glittering galaxy.
I would be remiss to not point out that as far as nepo babies go, Ray Nicholson, Jack Nicholson’s son, is captivating in his few short scenes as Skye’s boyfriend, the actor Paul Hudson. The scene that features Skye and Paul at a charity dinner has the kind of energy that ought to make the god of the uncanny himself, David Lynch, proud. It’s not so much the jump scares that stand out here (and don’t get me wrong, I love a good jump scare), it’s the second-hand embarrassment that’s slowly replaced by dread.
The Smile franchise, as it were, has drawn unfavorable comparisons to It Follows, a masterpiece horror movie about the need to pass down a curse before it consumes you. I think that with the first movie, those comparisons were more than justified. But Smile 2 shines on its own, as an elegant and disturbing commentary on fame as a hungry demon.
I don’t think horror movies need to contain social commentary in order to be good. Sometimes, they’re just meant to be fun, in the way that super spicy wings are fun, if painful. So I liked the fact that Skye was not just portrayed as just a victim, or a rat in a maze. There’s a grisly cheerfulness to Smile 2 — the sequence with Skye’s backup dancers with horrific, dead-eyed smiles plastered on their faces will stay with me for a long time — and it’s a fun movie as well as a scary one.
I am forced, however, to make some commentary of my own here, and it has to do with the way that prestigious awards continue to ignore horror. Yes, yes, the genre has its own awards, but also, goddammit, Naomi Scott deserves more. A lot of great horror actors do. Speaking of It Follows — Maika Monroe is among them too.
As bored as I was by the first movie, I also think the Smile franchise is based upon a really cool concept. There is something truly unnerving about a wide smile that doesn’t reach the eyes. It’s carnivorous and hollow, and as far as horror gimmicks go, it gets into your head and stays there.
This is all to say that I hope that there will be a third movie. I don’t know if it can match Smile 2’s sparkly, bloody energy, but the horrifying final act here feels like a nod in that direction.
A demonic force can be multiplied by fame, this movie says. The stakes now are much higher. I don’t know if Parker Finn will pull off a convincing third act, but at the start of this new year, I’m totally content to live in hope.