Day 14: Smile 2 - A Flashy Sequel That Can’t Top the Original.
If the first Smile had you jumping at every little grin, Parker Finn’s follow-up tries to push that tension even further. After the original pulled in more than 217 million dollars, Finn returns with Smile 2, picking up only a few days after the first film and bringing back the same unnerving entity with a new set of victims. Instead of exploring the creature’s origins or deepening the mythology, Finn shifts toward a louder and more extravagant style of horror. The intention is clear. The sequel wants to scare on a bigger scale, but the impact is not always as sharp or intimate as before.
This time, the story trades the quiet psychological dread of trauma for the chaotic and exaggerated world of fame. The film surrounds you with forced smiles, frantic fans, diva behaviour, and stalkers who treat boundaries like decorations. Finn uses celebrity culture as a backdrop for horror, turning the spotlight itself into a threat.
There are moments that are genuinely funny and others that remind you of the eerie tension the first film handled so well. However, the sequel often leans too heavily into spectacle, and the longer runtime slows down a story that would have been stronger with more restraint.
Smile 2 has energy and ambition, but it struggles to recreate the focused terror that made the original so effective. It has ideas, it has style, and it has a few solid scares, yet the magic of the first film is harder to find when everything is bigger, louder, and stretched thinner than it needs to be.
The scares themselves are still sharp, and Finn builds tension with slow-burning unease that erupts into grotesque body-horror moments. Broken bones, dislocated jaws, and unsettling hospital scenes keep the discomfort high, backed by sound design that feels wet, heavy, and deliberately nasty. There are clever fake-outs too, including a wild sequence with backing dancers that plays like horror theatre. Even though knowing the entity’s possession rules softens the mystery this time, the jump scares still land.
But bigger does not always mean better. Smile 2 is louder, flashier, and more ambitious, and while it aims to expand the world of the original, it loses the quiet psychological dread that made the first film linger in your mind long after it ended. The subtle terror of a single disturbing smile is replaced by spectacle. Still, if you enjoy horror that blends sharp commentary on fame with bold, creative scares, this sequel offers a wild and entertaining ride, even if it never fully recaptures the magic of the first.
