(Ed. remark: This post comes at the end of Smile 2 to discuss the future of the franchise. Only read on if you or the Smile demon chasing you want to know what happened at the end of the movie.)
It doesn’t take much to see Smile 2‘s end is coming. This is not an insult; predictability is nothing to denigrate, if done right, and Smile 2 certainly offers the perverse pleasures that really make the done deal sing. Featuring Skye Riley (Naomi Scott) in the final days of preparing to open her tour at Madison Square Garden, still recovering from an accident that nearly killed her, struggling with addiction and a drug dealer who smilingly committed suicide – well, it all starts to feel like Chekhov is on a comeback tour. We don’t even need to see the final shot to know what Skye’s terrifying beam means as she spins around on stage, or what it means to her audience: the end is near.
And in my book, that goes double for the Smile franchise.
What makes Smile 2 work is the way it builds on the first. It’s the “girl, so confusing” remix by Smile: inextricably linked to the thoughts, themes, rules and fears of the original. Undeniably an improvement and progression of his ideas and artistry. Director Parker Finn finds new ways to keep the Smile Demon circling Skye, ripping away her defenses the same way she pulls her hair. It comes as dance mobs, bedfellows and long lost friends. It’s a window into her past and she’s pulled out to plummet. While that terrifying grin can always twist the blade the same way, no two attacks on her senses are the same, leaving her (and us) perpetually unmolested.
As much as I enjoyed it Smile 2All this makes watching the film a very miserable experience. The film’s unrelentingly grim world doesn’t leave Skye many options, and each new public outburst is its own knife in the gut, whether it leaves a mark or not. When you watch it, you see a person’s life falling away until he/she is finally completely gone; this demon plays by only a few rules, and one of them is that the house always wins.
Smile 2 is aware of this fact; in the language of Friends, It know we knowand it goes all in. While the first Dr. Looming Rose Cotter (Sosie Bacon) into thinking she’s won, she pulls back the curtain and reveals that her last battle has all been another hallucination, Smile 2‘s entire final act is a hazy vision. It ups the ante by introducing one psych after another until she takes the stage like we always knew she would. It’s an elegant extension of the first’s thunderous ending: Rose’s emotional breakthrough didn’t save her, but neither did Skye’s attempts to succumb to her darkest demons. It’s an evolution into the Smile demon ethos that didn’t seem possible after the first, and after it scarred and condemned an arena full of fans, one that has played out the logical conclusion of this chain of fear.
And that’s exactly why Smile 2 should be the end of the franchise as we know it. Smile 2 takes the idea to its logical conclusion: the Smile Demon has hit the big time, cursing some 19,500 people at once. There is no more control over it. The trauma is loose and likely to spread at logarithmic levels. And if the Smile franchise has taught us anything so far, it’s that there’s only one way out.
Finn has proven to be a smart director with a keen eye for using space and building fear; locking him into the Smile Demon’s game is an unnecessary restriction on a horror director who deserves to see how far he can bend. Sure, the studio could continue to mine him (or someone else) for a sequel, but to what end? When the ending is always a foregone conclusion, the bag of tricks is reversed and every journey is just another version of an artfully designed hall of misery, what is left?
The answer should be the end of everything, one way or another. Either Smile as a franchise needs to take a break, or they need to commit to the new world order that Skye’s big moment has unleashed. A Smile 3 should show us what happens when a demonic virus turns into an epidemic and multiplies faster than you can muster a grin. The metaphor, as loose as it is in this franchise, could shift to those who have withdrawn from society, perhaps focusing on preppers who show how you could leave the world, but you can’t really escape it. You could even go completely post-apocalyptic; something like Birdhouse or A quiet place with the threat of a grin as an omen of evil. There are options! But they have to follow the escalation Smile 2 she wrote in it. If Skye’s origins provided the franchise’s final note, it was one hell of a ride. Now it’s time for a bigger stage.
Smile 2 now playing in theaters.