Smile 2

Smile 2

Writer & Director – Parker Finn

2024, USA

Stars ~ Naomi Scott, Rosemarie DeWitt, Lukas Gage

 

Parker Finn’s franchise ‘Smile’ is proving to be quite the empathic franchise. Whether you see its premise of psychological illness as an infectious demon as questionable or as a manifestation of an old misconception, there is no doubting that Naomi Scott’s performance has the fiercest compassion. Just recently, I heard some work colleagues opine that as a celebrity had been into drugs and whatever, their untimely death was somehow unsympathetic, and obviously this lacks nuance, consideration and kindness. As Skye Riley, Naomi Scott’s raw turn as a successful pop star who is filled with self-loathing – and therefore most susceptible to the smile demon – never once drops the ball into implying she is deserving, even at her worst. The film goes a long way to determining that the celebrity life isolates and brings out the worst in an individual. It is Scott’s performance that is central and elevates the sequel to higher merit, even as it contains several showstoppers.

 

There’s more confidence here with the bigger budget and a deliberate focus that the original. It comes with many memorable images: a traffic accident blood smear like a smile; and the relentlessly smiling fangirl at the signing; a face pulled into a distorted grin in a vanity mirror, to name just three. The opening scene had me engaged in a way that ‘Terrifier 3’ didn’t manage at all – a carefully choreographed long take will always grab my attention – and by the end I was wondering why so many were saying they hadn’t seen something along the lines of ‘The Substance’ ever before. It won’t top ‘The Substance’ but then ‘Smile 2’ has a more eloquent agenda and characters and is more a bowl of multi-coloured candy than day-glo jelly. MikeMcGranaghan finds ‘Smile 2’s last act laughable, but as I was reading it as viewing the mental collapse of a flawed character, as well as the contagion potentially spreading, I was left strangely moved.

 

‘Smile 2’ spins through small-time crookery, popstar biopic, music video and supernatural curse so that the jump scares aren’t just cheap tactics (one jump scare had the entire audience I was with vibrating with chuckles at being caught for thirty seconds afterwards). And of course, the world of fame is the domain of fake smiles, although arguably Finn doesn’t quite make the most of this. Where he does is with the creepiness of an approaching dance routine, where the audience is the prey.

 

Going from the grey hues of the opening to the candy pop colourscheme of an endlessly superficial pop-world to more nightmarish shadows of horror, Finn uses the unique ability of cinema to undermine reality until everything collapses in on itself. When the biggest enemy is your own self-hatred, there is little reprieve and no winning.

 

All to say ‘Smile 2’ is a fun downer, a A24 horror version of Brady Cobert’s ‘VoxLux’ with a foot in James Wan jump scares. But like it’s predecessor, there’s a properly tragic feel and a haunting aftertaste and that most troubling and that most underrated ingredient that makes up horror: unfairness.

FrightFest '24 - day 3

Survive

Director: Frederic Jardin.

With: Emilie Dequenne, Andreas Pietschmann, Lisa Delmar, Lucas Ebel.

France 2024. 90 mins.

 

Probably intended more earnestly than it feels, but once you realise it’s enjoyable schlock in the manner of some “At the end of the world!” family adventure from the Sixties-Seventies, it is highly entertaining. Probably questionable science. “The conspiracy theory nuts were right!” particularly highlights the shonkiness. The effects and look are good. Here comes the psycho, but better than that and more horrible: here come the deep-sea crabs driven mad by oxygen.

 

 

The Last Voyage of  the Demeter

Director: André Øvredal.

With: Corey Hawkins, Aisling Franciosi, Liam Cunningham, David Dastmalchian.

USA 2023. 118 mins.

 

Troubled by distribution delays, Øvredal’s embellishment on one of ‘Dracula’s best passages proves a solid big monster movie with some good characterisation (ships were centres of diversity) and some great monster effects. Not at all gruesome or scary, but impressively mounted and touched with a little nastiness when it needs it. Lavish and slick Gothic horror entertainment.

 

 

Dead Mail

Directors: Joe DeBoer and Kyle McConaghy.

With: Sterling Macer Jr., John Fleck, Tomas Boykin, Micki Jackson.

USA 2024. 105 mins.

 

Set firmly in a dour, washed-out Eighties where most era homages look like cardboard cut-outs coloured in felt tips. Deliberately low-fi aesthetic, all the cassettes, typewriters, rotary phones and sleuthing mail departments surely puts this in a technological era that will be totally alien to younger viewers. Superior attention to detail, character and plotting makes this increasingly engrossing as an unusual thriller based upon synthesizer geeks and mail offices that work more like altruistic private detectives. There’s also bonus appreciation of the underappreciated heroism of working people just doing their job and taking a care. Its context feels so, so real with Fleck and Macer Jr’s performances infused with pathos rather that movie thriller panic and motivation. And the devotion to analogue synthesizer music on the soundtrack gives it that extra special element.

 

 

Traumatika

Director: Pierre Tsigaridis.

With: Rebekah Kennedy, Ranen Navat, Emily Goss. Susan Gayle Watts.

USA 2024. 87 mins.

 

A mess of a film that throws together ‘The Exorcist’, ‘Evil Dead’ and ‘Halloween’ vibes and anything else it can think of to no great coherence. If Tsigaridis prior ‘Two Witches’ had a kind of crude edge that added to its transgressive flavour, here there just feels an ugliness when it’s throwing in child abduction, abuse and murder. There’s nothing reflective or thoughtful here, nothing certain about its attitude to what it is rummaging around in and throwing up, just some early decent prolonged suspense sequences then devolution into whatever scuzziess takes its fancy with a tiny bit of media satire thrown in.

 

Strange Darling

Director JT Mollner.

With: Willa Fitzgerald, Ed Begley Jr., Robert Craighead, Kyle Gallner.

USA 2023. 96 mins

 

Told in six chapters but out of order, which means we get sensory and action overload up front before setting in for long two-hander flirting – “Are you a serial killer?” And then the revelations… Willa Fitzgerald is exceptional with Kyle Gallner more than her match. The 35mm thriller colour scheme, the abrasive then seductive sound design, the dialogue, the hints of something retro, all go to make this smart, fun, funny, upsetting but ultimately a hugely entertaining thrill ride with a little something to say about gender roles. Even makes room for making breakfast being a highlight.

 

Member’s Club

Director: Marc Coleman.

With: Dean Kilbey, Perry Benson, Steve Oram, Peter Andre.

UK 2024. 90 mins

 

 So, 'The Full Monty' vs. witches sounds solid enough.

 

Starts with tawdry middle-aged guy jerking off to what he thinks is a prostitute in a car getting a plank up his arse.

 

Then: past-it male strippers – because they’re always funny – being booked accidentally at a 12-year-old’s party because of dyslexia.

 

Not my kind of comedy.