Confronting Smile 2 and the Horror That Blurs Reality

While I am eating my Toast Hawaii and listening to the most ridiculous song from Emilia Perez—which has something to do with sex change and Bangkok—I realize that I have to come back to earth and write about Smile 2 again. Yesterday, I bought it on Prime Video to support my guy Parker Finn and my girl Naomi Scott.

For me, there is only one problem with this movie, and the one thing that ruins its rewatchability is that, like the first one, the second entry is too scary. I loved the first one—loved it! Saw it in the cinema, stood up, looked over at my friend, and he was giving me the smile. After that, I needed at least a year before I could revisit it. I watched the movie for a second time, and no matter how great I thought it was, the jump scares plus the concept just freaked me out.

Now, the second movie blew me away. We saw it in our favorite small cinema, and I shit myself throughout the whole thing. Stood up, tried to catch up with my friend on the way out, opened the door of the cinema—looked at him, and he was giving me the Smile 2. Diarrhea shooting out my ass! And then he had the nerve to go to a sauna and leave me to go home alone, where my freaking dog got scared by one of the things we keep up so he doesn’t chew it falling—giving me another jump scare.

Then I remembered telling my lover about this movie, and one night, out of nowhere, he just did the smile at me. I refused to look at him until he promised that he’d never do it again. He promised—and he never did it again—but a couple of times, there were slight suggestions that gave me that pre-feeling of diarrhea.

First of all, Naomi Scott should win an Oscar for that performance, and I hate that the horror genre is so easily dismissed. Remember Toni Collette in Hereditary, Florence Pugh in Midsommar, or Lupita Nyong’o in Us? And now A Quiet Place: Day One? Snubbed, snubbed, snubbed. They’ll be okay, I think, but I’m not sure if I will be.

Scott and the director made Riley so real that throughout the whole movie, I was stunned by the attacks she experienced. My brain refused to accept that this was just a movie, and I was completely sucked in, making this horrific experience feel like vivid reality. While watching at home, I kept demanding to pause here and there just to release the feelings that took hold of my body. During those pauses, I made my friend promise a couple of times that he would never do it again. This will probably make someone laugh, but this movie expanded the idea in my imagination of how far evil could go. This thing is next-level evil. The director, alongside Scott’s performance and reactions, pushed the boundaries of my mind regarding what evil is.

Whatever I thought about evil before, this entity is now at the top of the chart, and I don’t believe I have ever seen anything more brutal. It wasn’t just like a cat playing with a mouse—it was malignant viciousness, a picture of pure evil that has no stopping. I didn’t finish the movie last night—I needed a break—but I’ll do it today, even though I already know what’s about to happen and what Riley will experience next.

I was expecting nightmares, but I woke up well-rested and went almost immediately for a run. It was before dawn, and some other runner was running parallel to me on the other side of the street. It was dark, and he had weird mannerisms, and after a couple of seconds, he made this sharp turn and came onto my side of the street, right behind me. Boy, the hair on my back stood up as I heard his steps behind me. The fucking movie did me so wrong that I did what the guy did—made a sharp turn and went to the other side of the street where he had been, just to escape my fictional death.

Maybe as a child, I was scared of some movies with that same intensity—the kind that blurred the lines between film and reality. I remember watching Darkness Falls and how afraid I was of the dark and that witch, struggling to fall asleep for the next couple of days. I revisited it on purpose a couple of weeks ago to face my childhood fears, and seeing it now, with my grown-up mind and eyes, the fear just vanished before the ridiculous effects, weird acting, and lack of logic in that movie.

But how the hell am I going to overcome Smile 2 when it scared me in my adulthood?

The end of the movie suggests that the third entry will go viral, meaning we could end up in numerous directions—kind of like what A Quiet Place is doing right now, and what The Boys and soon Squid Game will try. What I actually need to see is something fighting this thing, because the power that this demon possesses makes me feel powerless before it. I need someone to kick its ass.

I just read that we’ll probably dive into its origin, which makes me nervous. Spoiler alert: it’s alive and nasty as ever. And now, while researching the third movie, I was actually reminded that the whole franchise spun out from a short film named Laura Hasn’t Slept, starring the actress who appeared in the first Smile as the demon’s first victim when she visited the psychologist, Rose—our main protagonist. Now I have to watch it, damn it.

I’m going to sing me some Emilia Perez songs to overcome the trauma that, as usual, I inflicted on myself.

Iliya Badev