In Smile 2, global pop star Skye Riley (Naomi Scott) is gearing up for her highly anticipated comeback tour after a very public battle with substance abuse and the devastating car crash that claimed her boyfriend’s life. As the tour kicks off, strange and terrifying events begin to haunt her. With the weight of her past and the relentless pressures of fame closing in, Skye finds herself facing not only her inner demons but a dark force that threatens to destroy her. Smile 2 Review Smile 2 is a cautionary tale of diminishing returns. With only the thinnest of stories and zero personal stakes, as the Smile demon’s choice, the film consists of virtually nothing but one hallucinatory jump scare after another. While each one is well crafted, there comes a point very early on when the lack of actual consequences, aside from some confusion by onlookers, morphs from fun scare to clock-ticking irritant as the repetition burns away narrative glycogen and muscle fatigue sets in. Smile 2’s plot takes an hour and twenty minutes to make itself known (that’s 1 hour and 20 minutes of variations on the same hallucination gimmick). However, its second act, which should introduce any twists or changes in narrative direction, is more of an amorphous blob that absorbs and repeats the first act’s schtick only with higher-seeming fake stakes before oozing into its three-minute conclusion. A conclusion, by the way, that renders 80% of the film moot. Smile 2’s bloated runtime (2h 12m) and repetitive routine might have been redeemable had the writers not gone out of their way to make the protagonist appear deserving of her punishment. Alas, they substituted likability for edginess and catharsis for a twist. The supporting cast gives mostly just north of serviceable performances. At the same time, Smile 2’s lead Naomi Scott, who played the strong independent Jasmin in the travesty that was the live-action Aladdin, is somewhat uneven as events build to cataclysmic. In these moments, Scott appears to be running out of emotional runway and cannot take off. Other times, her reactions are so animated and Vader-like “Noooooo” artificial that the lie sucks the energy out of the retreaded scare. Lastly, what is it with Hollywood’s current love affair with guerilla musicals? Just tell the audience that a film is a musical (looking at you, Joker 2), or don’t make one. Smile 2 doesn’t quite cross the line into a full-on Broadway, but it sure does experiment with it like its parents will be home soon. In the end, despite several aesthetically interesting moments and the scariest game of Red Light, Green Light, Smile 2 is plagued by a too-unreliable narrator and a concept that seems to have little new to offer.   WOKE ELEMENTS Cocktail Party Politics There’s nothing in the narrative to support this, but Scott’s character’s personal assistant is clearly an effeminate gay man. It could have just as easily been a straight man, a masculine gay man, or a woman. I’m left to assume that it was a decision to give the filmmakers enough clout to be invited to the right cocktail parties and pat themselves on the back. The post Smile 2 first appeared on Worth it or Woke.