A habit has emerged this year of sequels accused of being little more than a ‘rinse and repeat’ of their predecessor in films like ‘Inside Out 2’ and ‘Terrifier 3’. (I bet this is the first time Art and Joy have been compared. You’re welcome.) One of the many things working about Parker Finn’s “Smile 2” is that it feels like an attempt to instead take the ideas of to expand the successful first film. by simply repeating them. While that film joined a subgenre of horror films that use mental illness as a supernatural force, Finn chooses to include issues like self-loathing, addiction, and even the commercialization of pop stars in its edgy sequel. It certainly has one thing in common: a great central performance. Sosie Bacon was the MVP of the first “Smile” and Naomi Scott is simply phenomenal in the superior follow-up, put through the emotional and physical wringer for two hours for your entertainment. A bit like a pop star.

Like its most obvious source of inspiration, ‘It Follows’, ‘Smile 2’ again explores the idea of ​​a person being haunted rather than a place. Finn’s film opens with the fate of a character from the first film, Kyle Gallner’s Joel, who must pass his curse on to someone else and has chosen a drug dealer as his victim in a well-photographed scene of violent mayhem. An unplanned visitor named Lewis (Lukas Gage) ends up witnessing the carnage and becomes the one affected by what can only be called a parasite, something that feeds on your insecurity and trauma and presents you with increasingly terrifying visions, often of people who you know love to do absolutely horrible things with a smile on their face.

It isn’t long before Lewis smashes his face into bloody pieces with a heavy weight in front of troubled pop star Skye Riley (Naomi Scott), who is planning a comeback after a year of recovery from a car accident that killed her boyfriend Paul. In flashbacks and ghost stories, Paul is played by none other than Ray Nicholson, who pulled off the evil smile that his father Jack made so famous and which reportedly inspired this film. You know the look.

Skye has left her addiction and sadness behind, but the ‘Smile Creature’ uses all her insecurities and weaknesses against her to slowly drive her crazy. Her mother and manager Elizabeth (Rosemarie DeWitt), assistant Josh (Miles Gutierrez-Riley) and record company head Darius (Raul Castillo) are ready for Skye’s comeback, but her increasingly fragile mental state makes that impossible. Skye tries to reunite with an old friend named Gemma (Dylan Gelula), someone she thinks she can trust, but ‘Smile 2’ isn’t just about spookiness, it’s about cruelty. It’s about being pushed to your mental limits in ways that are physically and emotionally unimaginable. Whether it’s the thought of seeing a murderous, naked fan in her apartment or a vision of the dead Paul in the audience at a fundraising event, Skye sees reality shatter before her eyes.

It’s a hugely demanding role for an actress and Scott is rightly great, selling the horror and fear that has overtaken Skye’s life. Finn demands a lot from his lead artist, causing her to experience physical and emotional challenges, and it matters a lot that Scott commits to every beat. We believe what is happening around her because we believe her shocked reaction to it. The excellent sound design comes close, but she is really the key to this film’s success.

To be fair, ‘Smile 2’ loses some of its many thematic threads about how fans feel like they own pop stars and how so many of them are asked to bury their trauma and just smile, but there’s plenty left in the basis of the piece to get across the finish line. In that regard, there’s no reason for a horror sequel to be longer than two hours, but it’s more because Finn has so many possibilities he wants to explore with his concept than any sense of narrative bloat or subsidence or padding. I was never bored, and there are some really great sequences in it, especially one that could be called “Smile Dancers” and which in concept and execution is one of the best in the genre this year.

I have a general aversion to films that use mental illness as a cheap horror device (the hated ‘Lights Out’ for example), so what impresses me most about these films is the way Finn avoids those exploitative traps by being so attentive to concentrate on the emotional events. truth of its heroines. Yes, there are a few too many jump scares and at least one too many twists, but it’s all forgivable when you think of the real fear in Naomi Scott’s eyes. Finn loves faces, faces distorted by evil and fear. Even more than after the first film, I’m interested in what he’ll do next, and more confident that it won’t just be more of the same.