Beware, spoilers!
How does Smile 2’s horror finale happen?
Smile 2 revolves around pop star Skye Riley (Naomi Scott), who dies after the bloody suicide of an acquaintance suffers from horrible visions: People with malicious grins seem to threaten them and derail their lives. For Skye, the boundaries between vision and reality are becoming increasingly blurred.
Check out the German trailer for Smile 2 here:
Smile 2: Do you see it too? – Trailer (German) HD
The nurse Morris (Peter Jacobson) finally gives her an explanation: By killing herself, a being that feeds on pain and trauma has taken possession of her. It ultimately kills its host through apparent suicide and goes to the Witnesses to the bloody act above.
Morris claims to have found a way out of Skye’s situation: He wants to stop her heart artificially, because with this form of clinical death the creature will also lose its power. Skye, who has stabbed her mother in a delusion and is on the run from the law, meets Morris in a discarded Pizza Hut to make her heart stop.
But here’s the twist: Morris disappears and Skye meets the horror creature in his place. As it turns out, it has its host Large parts of the past events were only faked: She didn’t kill her mother, didn’t run away, and didn’t meet Morris, who may not even exist.
Skye wakes up in an elaborate stage costume and finds that in just a few seconds she will be a… Concert in front of 20,000 fans will take place – in New York’s renowned Madison Square Garden. It is the highlight of her tour and one that she has been preparing for for a long time.
Many will have missed a hidden meaning in the Smile 2 finale
Anyone who has seen the first Smile film knows what is to come: while the eyes of their fans and countless cameras are focused on them, Skye kills herself, grinning madly, with a microphone herself. The horror creature in her won.
Not only that, it has clearly used Skye’s popularity to increase its own spread or infection rate. 20,000 people witnessed Skye’s alleged suicide on the spot alone, millions more could have witnessed it through the cameras. Everyone will now live through Skye’s murderous nightmare. “Smile and the world smiles with you.”
Director Parker Finn also revealed a meta level of the finale in the Entertainment Weekly interview certainly not everyone noticed is: When the camera shows the endless sea of shocked fans, it is also supposed to hold a mirror up to the cinema audience.
[Es geht um] the fall from grace of a pop star who can’t bear the things that are thrust upon him. I wanted to create a meta moment where the concert arena audience is staring through the screen at the audience in the theater. What I want to ask is: Did we do this to Skye ourselves by writing for Smile 2 [ins Kino] have returned? I found this idea of complicity exciting. Is Smile 3 coming our way?
Smile 2 will certainly delight many as a pure horror film, but as a social commentary it also offers great metaphorical richness. After the brilliant ending, a large part of the audience will looking forward to Smile 3. However, there have been no official announcements about a possible sequel yet.