In many ways, Smile 2 is everything a sequel to a successful, studio-produced horror film should be. It is bigger and scarier than its growing franchise’s first installment , and it features more virtuosic creative swings on the part of returning writer-director Parker Finn. Armed with a bigger budget this time around, Finn immediately ups the ante in Smile 2 , which opens with a muscular, sustained piece of bravura filmmaking that both neatly and absurdly bridges the gap between its film’s plot and its predecessor’s.
This sequence, impressive in its confidence, if logically thin, feels like it could have been pulled straight out of a non- Smile film. It proves, more than anything else, that Finn is a commanding visual craftsman — one capable of thriving even outside the confines of the horror genre. His grasp on pace, exposition, and dramatic logic leaves plenty to be desired, though.
Smile 2 not only adopts the same confusing, murky narrative tricks as its parent film, but also tries to take them even further. It blurs the line between its character’s reality and her hallucinations so aggressively that it causes more confused bouts of head-scratching than it does the kind of audible, shocked gasps it is clearly striving to elicit. These issues, while not fatal to the film’s success, are made worse when it is revealed that Smile 2 has been marching toward a high-concept, admittedly applause-worthy punch line the whole time.
It’s a sequel that largely proves to .