Skye Riley sits in her drug dealer’s apartment waiting for him to come back into the living room. When he enters, an eerie smile is plastered on his face. Not a warm smile, but a cold evil smile. Riley is frozen, terrified with fear. He slowly picks up a weight and repeatedly slams his head into it until he drops to the floor dead.

Smile 2 left me disappointed and confused because of its messy ending and lack of scariness.. Although its predecessor, Smile, received mixed reviews it was a big enough success to make another sequel.

After reading many positive reviews, I was excited going into Smile 2. For the most part the movie was fairly okay, until the very end. 

The story follows Skye Riley, a famous pop star who is battling her past traumas of alcoholism, drug use, and a bad car accident where her boyfriend died. After the Smile curse is passed onto her, she experiences a series of strange hallucinations, and she cannot tell if they are real. Once Riley and others start getting hurt, Riley grows worried and tries to stop the entity controlling her. Up until this point, the movie is fine. 

The last ten minutes of the movie is the real twist. The audience does not know what is “in her head” and what is real. But Instead of leaving me intrigued this left me confused and disappointed. 

The end of the movie is clearly sequel-bait, setting up a potential Smile 3 movie. I’m worried this series will go on forever, continuing to end with the curse being passed on to a new character. 

Another big problem with the movie is that it is not very scary. Most of the scares are jump scares. While the movie did a good job at building up suspense, the actual scare always felt lackluster. It doesn’t help that the trademark creepy smile the characters make is more laughable than terrifying.

The final scene has a lot of gore, which is supposed to be very scary, but it honestly left me bored. There was no suspense to it, just blood.

A lot of reviews bring up how this movie phenomenally deals with trauma, but I personally felt that Skye Riley’s trauma was a plot point that the writers mostly forgot about and could have done more with. 

Reviews also point out how this movie is better than the original, which I agree with. But just because it is better does not mean it is necessarily good.

The movie did have its highlights. I think Naomi Scott, who played Skye Riley, gave a great performance. She really captured the feeling of confusion her character dealt with. I also liked the cinematography, the interesting angles made the movie even more unsettling. 

Although it has its flaws, I have to give credit where credit is due, Smile 2 is intriguing. If you’re not in the mood for a masterpiece but still want to watch an entertaining horror movie, I would recommend Smile 2, but maybe skip the ending though.