At a certain point in time, horror was perhaps one of the most infamous genres when it came to unnecessary sequels. Horror franchises like Friday the 13th, Halloween, and Saw originated from an original no-budget smash hit film and grew to carry a number of films that are only matched outside of the horror genre by the Fast and Furious movies. Aside from being plentiful, these horror sequels were often also famous for one other thing: being bad. You’d be hard-pressed to find an unironic defense for films like Halloween: The Return of Michael Myers or Jason X or Saw 3D. Nowadays, the horror franchise is all but dead– the main franchises in the genre dominating the multiplex are leftovers from that bygone era, films such as your Halloween Ends-es, Scream 6s, and Saw Xs. With the sequel to the 2021 horror movie Smile having just arrived this past October, a new horror franchise has just hit multiplexes, and the eternal horror movie sequel question stands: is it any good?

The welcome, if surprising, answer is yes. Smile 2 has the same basic premise as its predecessor: a trauma-stricken woman is haunted by a curse that feeds on trauma over 7 days and passes itself on by forcing a new person to witness the death of its current host, but Smile 2 manages to expand on everything that worked in the first movie and breeze past most things that didn’t, leading to a sequel that is constantly engaging, gloriously entertaining, and, most importantly of all, just downright terrifying. 

One of the main improvements that Smile 2 has over the original is its protagonist. Whereas Smile’s protagonist Rose was a psychiatrist who only served to get scared and make explicit the movie’s poorly handled mental health allegory, Smile 2’s Skye Riley (played in a powerhouse, genuinely star-making performance by Naomi Scott) is far more dynamic, as a pop star just coming out of a 1 year career hiatus after a traumatic car crash nearly killed her and did kill her boyfriend during a drug bender. Like Rose, Skye has trauma in her past that the Smile “demon” (as they call it in the film) inhabits to psychologically torment her, but the change in profession, as well as adapting the trauma to be something much more physical, lends the film many more exciting chances for scare sequences and provides a public, front-facing setting where the psychological descent feels all the more weighty (one scene at a concert rehearsal where Skye hallucinates herself experiencing the same injury she sustained during the car crash feels especially stomach-churning). Once again, Scott is genuinely amazing in the lead role, nailing both the choreography and singing expected of her pop star character and every note of spiteful defiance and emotional brittleness she’s given once the scares begin. It’s rare for an actor to get awards nominated for a horror movie, but Scott commits so wholeheartedly to the role that it makes you delusional enough to think it might happen.

The sequel doesn’t just improve on its protagonist, though; as a horror film, Smile 2 is an incredible step up, delivering multiple heartstopping, knee-jolting scare sequences. As a longtime horror fan who likes to think he can’t be scared by most horror movies, multiple scenes in Smile 2 made me want to cover my eyes and curl up like a child scared of what might jump out of the shadows in his bedroom– one sequence in which Skye believes a crazed stalker has broken into her hotel and is hiding at the end of a dark hallway even made me jump in my seat so forcefully I pulled a muscle in my leg. Jumpscares are abound in Smile 2, but they rarely feel lazily delivered, all built up with slick one-take shots, an expert knowledge of space, and excellent camera moves. Director Parker Finn, who’s directed both the original film and its sequel, lets himself loose in Smile 2, executing the film with a gleefully cruel tone and supernaturally controlled camera, which makes the more generic aspects of the film feel engaging and builds the film to a perfect, literally showstopping finale. Smile 2 is possibly too long and unexceptional in the story department, but as a horror movie and as a sequel, it exceeds with flying colors.