The Return of the Smile That Haunts
When Smile (2022) first terrified audiences, it wasn’t just because of jump scares or eerie grins — it was because the film turned mental pain into a supernatural curse. Now, with Smile 2 (2024), director Parker Finn returns with a sharper, more psychological sequel that refuses to play it safe.
This time, the story follows pop star Skye Riley (played by Naomi Scott), who seems to have everything — fame, fans, and a perfect life — until she starts seeing people smiling at her in the most horrifying way imaginable. What begins as a chilling déjà vu turns into a fight for her sanity, forcing her to uncover the smiling curse origins that destroyed Dr. Rose Cotter in the first film.
But beneath the surface, Smile 2 is not just about passing on a curse. It’s about how fame, trauma, and public pressure become invisible prisons — and how pretending to be happy can be the most dangerous mask of all.
Fame as a Curse — The Horror Behind the Glamour
Naomi Scott’s Skye Riley is not your typical horror protagonist. She is a pop icon and horror is the last thing that crosses your mind when you think of someone like her. Perhaps that is why Skye is so relatable – even horror is glamorized nowadays. Skye lives a seemingly perfect life and is admired by thousands; however, she lives a life that has been curated, filtered, and monetized. She is obsessed by love until it becomes cursed. Despite it all, when she starts seeing cursed smiles, no one believes her.
Director Parker Finn cleverly juxtap the symptoms of Skye’s celebrity status as a metaphor of seeing the scars of mental health when performing. The more she smiles for the cameras and the bigger the haunt. Skye’s endless cycle of concert, interview, and photo-shoot is a continual stage for psychological torture. No one screens for help when celebrity mental health is at risk.
Skye performing is one of the movies most renowned sequences. The smiling entity manifests among her fans while Skye is at the center of the stage. The faces of the so called fans and Skye are masked by the lights, and the masked narcissism of lights is a forgotten metaphor of pain.
Naomi Scott said in an interview, “I wanted Skye to feel real — someone who’s breaking inside while being told to smile through it.” Scott’s portrayal offers ground horror in raw humanity and exemplifies the struggles many real-world celebrities face behind the scenes.
A Director Obsessed With Fear.
As Parker Finn — the mind behind both Smile films — described the sequel as “a deeper descent into the psychology of survival.” Unlike the prior filmmaking in Smile 2, he seems to have displayed growth — more atmosphere and emotional stakes, less reliance on traditional horror elements. He moved from replicating the formula to expanding the universe.
In the Smile 2 universe, trauma impacts others, unlike the prior filmmaking, which solely dealt with supernatural trauma. Finn removes the curse of possession from the creepy chains to a deeper layer of generational emotional inheritance. Unlike the prior filmmaking, Finn certainly expanded the universe. The production of the film itself carried weight. After the first film’s success, Finn and Paramount held pressure to expand the sequel in scale while trying to maintain authenticity. Reportedly, the early drafts spiraled into multiple disconnected narratives which, after a significant revision, centered around Skye’s personal breakdown, resulting in a far more intimate and terrifying sequel.
Returning to create the film’s signature visuals, Cinematographer Charlie Sarroff captures the profound restlessness in the harsh light, the suffocatingly claustrophobic frames, and the color gradations that ever so softly move in tandem with Skye’s shifting mental state. As her mind unravels, the world of her celebrity begins to bleed and drain away, replaced by muted colors and shadows that pulsate with an accursed life.
When Trauma Becomes Contagious
The emotionally haunting quality of Smile 2 is due to its unflinching engagement with trauma. The trauma curse that spreads through witnessed suicide, and more broadly, the pain that we witness and endure in silence.
Skye, like Rose before her, tries to treat the supernatural rationally by dismissing it as stress and hallucinations. The film communicates sharply that there is trauma that we cannot “deal” with in silence. It must be confronted, articulated, and integrated.
Skye delivers one of the film’s many haunting monologues, “They told me to sing about pain like it was beautiful. Now I can’t tell where my songs end and my nightmares begin.” That line, improvised during production, allegedly came from Naomi Scott’s thoughts about the pains of fame and the creative pressure that accompanies it.
“Smile 2” combines actual emotional realities with horror fantasy to confuse possession and depression. It makes it clear to viewers that what truly affects us is not paranormal — it is the feeling of suffering and not being seen.
“Smile 2” incorporates music into the story and the overall feel of the film. Cristobal Tapia de Veer (The White Lotus) composed experimental music combining dissonant pop and eerie ambient sounds.
The songs Skye wrote for the film serve as emotional time capsules and embody her downward spiral. One song is especially haunting — “Keep Smiling.” It starts as a cheerful pop song and slowly evolves into a screaming distorted cry for help, paralleling Skye’s descent into madness.
To achieve true and unrefined emotions, raw audio of Naomi Scott singing the songs was recorded while she was acting out the scenes. Parker Finn had spoken about how the raw audio and deeply emotional sounds, including sobs and gasps, became integral to the film’s audio.
From Hashtags to Hauntings
In a culture driven by viral content, Smile 2 examines how entertainment capitalizes on fear. After the initial horrifying incidents, Skye’s breakdown becomes fodder for gossip, memes, and online conspiracy theories. Some users even question whether she is faking her breakdown for attention.
This meta-layer resonates strongly. The film lays bare the trauma and pain desensitization of society, scrutinizing the consumption of trauma for clicks and spectacle. Parker Finn’s work is a commentary on the insidious nature of “performative empathy” viral culture, which suggests that modern fame leaves no opportunity for vulnerability, even when one is experiencing suffering.
In one scene, Skye scrolls through her phone and finds fan edits of her breakdown set to her own music, a personal nightmare exacerbated by a world that avidly documents suffering.
A Smile That Never Dies
Without spoiling the film, Smile 2 is a reflection that ends without resolution. The film’s message remains: healing is not about escaping fear, but about confronting it and the ugliness that comes with it. The cycle of the curse is unbroken, but so is the message.
Naomi Scott’s final screen performance is striking, instilling horror, heartbreak, and unwavering defiance. Rather than scream, she faces the curse and dares it to take her, capturing the spirit of both exorcism and liberation.
Parker Finn’s Smile 2 ultimately shifts its horror roots into an emotional reckoning. It is less about the specters of the past and far more about the invisible burdens we conceal behind smiles: the trauma, the expectations, and the guilt.
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