SPOILER ALERT: This story contains spoilers for “ Smile 2 ,” now in theaters. Parker Finn , the writer and director of 2022’s horror hit “Smile” and the just-released “Smile 2,” has taken one of the most recognizable horror ideas in recent years and blown it up even bigger for the sequel. In this chapter, troubled pop star Skye Riley (Naomi Scott) begins to question her reality as she is haunted by increasingly troubling and violent images.
Finn spoke with Variety about making a movie about a music superstar, the haunting ending and what future sequels might look like. I wanted to see if I could catch audiences off guard with what we would do for the sequel. I wrote and directed that first film to exist in its own right.
I had no agenda for a sequel at that point, and I think sometimes they get made for the wrong reasons, or cynical reasons. If I was going to ask audiences to give me their time again, I was going to try to offer something unexpected and fresh. That first month I was thinking about ideas, anything that came to me I ended up throwing out, because I thought, “It’s coming too quickly.
It’s too obvious of a place to go.” I needed to be able to hang this story on a character I could invest in thematically and emotionally, that was going to offer something new to this story, this world. I was hit by this bolt of lightning with this idea for this character of Skye Riley, this mega pop star.
It felt like a gigantic swing that certainly nobody wou.
