Hello, everyone. Welcome to Slash Film Daily. Today's Tuesday, November 19th, 2024. On today's episode of the show,

I'm going to talk a little bit about Smile 2 and present an interview with writer-director Parker Finn.

My name is Ben Pearson. I'm an editor at slashfilm.com, and this podcast contains spoilers for

Smile 2. So proceed accordingly. I remember being mixed on the first smile, which was Parker Finn's

feature directorial debut. It came out back in 2022. I remember really enjoying a majority of the movie,

but I was pretty turned off by its ending, which I thought was a little over the top and maybe a little

goofy for my taste. I liked the lead performances from

Sosie Bacon and the great Kyle Gawner. It had a killer premise that tapped into the

spooky unsettling vibes of films like The Ring and it follows. The marketing campaign was

really innovative and effective. I'm sure you probably remember they had people smiling at major league

baseball games sitting behind the plate and trying to freak people out that way. And there's

this great underdog feeling to the movie because it was originally going to go straight to Paramount

Plus and then the studio decided to put it in theaters and it ended up making a lot of money.

For Smile 2, I can thankfully

say that I do not have the same problem because the ending of this sequel is maybe the best

thing about it. Well, that end Naomi Scott's performance as Sky Riley, a pop star, who becomes

haunted by the Smile entity and whose sanity is slowly shredded as her life spins out of control.

Naomi Scott, who I thought was one of the only decent parts of Disney's live-action

Aladdin remake, is absolutely put through the ringer in this film.

And she gives a tremendously physical performance that feels believable and real and honest

and heartbreaking, especially in the scenes where the entity

basically tricks Sky into doing things that she would never otherwise do. There's a scene where

...