2025 October Horror Challenge #21: "Smile 2"

I really liked the original movie Smile, so I was looking forward to this one Well as much as I can be said to be looking forward to any sequel. What I mean by that, is that sometimes a movie is really good, and then they green light a sequel because that first movie was good and made a lot of money and then the sequel is a huge pile of crap and that can happen even with the best of intentions so I wasn't sure if this was going to be a good sequel or not if it was going to build upon the story that the first movie created. which that's really the thing I wish movies wouldn't have sequels if the sequel is not going to take what happened in the original movie and build the lore and build the story and add to it until it becomes more of a saga that what a sequel should do in my opinion and I don't see that happening very often. most of the time especially with horror movies, the sequels are just cash grabs to make money so while I was looking forward to hearing more about the legend behind smile and what it does to people, I was also worried that this movie wouldn't be about any of that and would just be a bunch of crap and some gore thrown together to make a quick buck. So which is it? I guess we will see won't we? I think that sometimes I say I would like to be a famous author but mostly that's just my desire to write and have my words mean something to people, I would never really want to be famous especially not the level of fame that the characters sky Riley has in the movie smile too because she is put up on a pedestal by her fans and she's just a human being and she's messed up like all humans are and she has to pretend to be perfect and I don't know how I would deal with that and the pressures of being famous and the pressures of having a career like hers and having the news know about every single thing that happens in your life it's just very traumatizing the way the movie presents it and it makes me feel for the character even more than I would have felt for the character in any other circumstance. So I relate to this character and I care what happens to her which makes the movie even more devastating cuz lots of horrible things happen to her and it's really violent and the actress really isn't afraid to go there for this part so that impresses me. "Fuck the tour!" seriously, when she screams this, i can totally relate to what she's feeling. This movie really freaked me out. I guess mostly because it's praying upon fears that I already have. I'm scared that I'm just a screw up like sky is scared that she's just a screw up in this movie, and I'm scared that I won't be able to hold down a job and perform the tasks that I have to perform to do the job properly because it's been so long since I've done that now, that it's just something that plagues my mind so I can see how a parasite using your worst fears against you and crawling inside your mind and using the very things that keep you up at night can be terrifying. This is one of those mind fuck movies that's very difficult to comprehend while it's going on. because you're dealing with an unreliable narrator and something like this supernatural entity that messes with people's minds, you never really know what's real and what's not, so from one moment to the next there's some horrible gore and some horrible deaths and then it's gone because it was fake, but then it's back because it was real, but then it's gone because it was fake again, and it's very disconcerting but it's done very well in this movie so I have to applaud the screenwriters and the editors and the special effects people especially for making that nasty gore look pretty real there were a couple times when I went okay I could do a better job in my backyard but for the most part the special effects in this movie really are special and I appreciate that. This movie's not for the fan of heart but it's good I want to see a smile three now so I can see the story continue cuz I feel like this one did not wrap up enough of the story for me to really know what the hell happened and what was going on and I still kind of don't know what was real and what was it which is good for a mind fuck movie that's exactly what it's supposed to do to your brain but my brain is trembling and twitching and angry at me for subjecting it to this movie because it can't figure things out so I would say that this movie and she used exactly what it sets out to do and it's well worth checking out for fans of this type of film.