At 127 minutes, Smile 2 is long. And first half alone makes it feel way longer than that.
For me, the movie started on an off note. I had seen the first movie, but I still expected the second one to start with some sort of setup. It didn’t, instead it started directly after the events of the first movie. I’m not a fan of writers assuming that we would have everything fresh in our head. People have other things to do than obsessing over the movie and watching the previous one to prepare.
Getting back to the first half, it felt excruciatingly slow. The second half and the ending clear a lot of it and I think it’ll be better on a second watch, but that does not wash away the slowness of the first half.
Oh, and you’d not be mistaken for thinking in first half that star of the movie wasn’t Naomi Scott but the Voss water bottles.
Seriously, this is an out of control sponsorship deal.
- There’s too much talk of hydration
- There are several scenes of Naomi gulping water from Voss bottles
- There are fridges full of Voss bottles everywhere
- The only time a water bottle breaks is revealed to be a dream sequence!
And I’m not the only one who thinks that, people I watched with also commented on how it was distracting.
As for the good parts, there are several good jump scares. If you’re into body horror (I am not) and like bloody scenes, some killings are gruesome.
The opening led me to believe that they spoiled the ending. They didn’t, but I interpreted “Six Days Later” in the opening scene to be six days after the ending of the second movie, not the first one. But that’s more on me.
Despite Naomi Scott’s stellar performance, I feel that the first movie’s protagonist, played by Sosie Bacon, was more relatable. A relative nobody going insane while people don’t believe her is scarier to me, compared to a rock star with infinite privilege.
I saw the original movie on streaming, and it was great, despite the weird ending. The second one, it’s alright, but not as good. It felt like a movie made for critics and repeat viewers.