“Smile 2” was released on Oct. 18, continuing the deadly story of Smile’s predecessor regarding the demon and its host.
Within two years, Parker Finn, Marty Bowen, Wyck Godfrey, Isaac Klausner, and Robert Salerno, the producers of the Smile Franchise, created a new demonstration of how the Smile demon affects hosts, messes with their minds, and eventually kills them.
“Smile 1,” the first movie which came out in 2022, explains the background of the franchise. The main antagonist in the Smile franchise is an entity that agonizes its victims with illusions prior to their possession. The demon forces its victim to wear a sinister smile and commit suicide in front of an audience. The smiling demon feeds off its hosts’ fears and trauma, subjecting them to hallucinations, stress, depression, insomnia, and confusion. The smiling entity normally plagues the host for five days before it kills the host and moves to the next person.
The movies are extremely similar, however the two movies have distinct differences, which make them both thrilling to watch.
In both movies, cinematographer Charlie Sarroff uses his camera skills to make the audience feel as uneasy as the main character. Sarnoff uses large and wide camera angles to transition throughout different scenes in the films. The two movies make use of different lighting when the audience’s attention can be directed to a different place. Mostly, to bring emphasis on a jumpscare, or bring focus to an important part of the movie. Both movies often throw the movie upside down, hoping to disorient the audience.
Both movies begin with the main character’s profession and backstory. In “Smile 1,” the main character Dr. Rose Cotter, is an emergency psychiatrist working at a hospital. The movie explains that her mother died in front of her when she was a child, which made her want to go into psychiatry. The first scene is Rose speaking to a patient, explaining that everything he’s experiencing is in his head, disregarding what he believes is true. After a patient kills herself in front of Rose, she is automatically under the influence of the smiling demon. Throughout the movie, Rose tries to confide in the people around her. “Smile 2” opens with a clip of Skye Riley explaining how she’s fighting for sobriety after a terrible car accident that killed her boyfriend. Despite her mental state, her job as a famous musician demands that she always smile for her audience.
Both main characters have their own specified side characters, that help them progress through the movie. In the first movie, Rose had an ex-boyfriend, Joel. He supported Rose and believed in her hallucinations, as well as worked with her to get rid of the smile entity. In comparison, Skye also had a friend Gemma, whom she depended on and trusted throughout the movie.
Even though both movies have many similar attributes, and neither main characters survive in the end, “Smile 2” has multiple different elements that give the movie its intrigue, possibly more than the original movie.
Rose and Skye have tragic backstories, which is what the smile demon uses to traumatize and incapacitate the host. In “Smile 1,” as a child, Rose found her mom almost dead and ran away. Skye and Paul Hudson, her boyfriend at the time, were killed in a car crash while under the influence of drugs a year before she was possessed. Both situations left the main characters traumatized. However, Skye’s trauma was broadcast and used for entertainment which added to her stress.
When someone is possessed by the Smile demon, reality changes for the audience as well as the protagonist. However, the first movie allowed us to see the characters and understand that some of the characters are real. But, in the second movie, when it finished, the audience was left confused and unable to trust what was real or fake in the movie.
After understanding that they are infected with the smile demon, Skye and Rose have separate reactions and ideas as to how to get rid of it. Rose believes that she can fully get rid of the demon, by killing someone else on her terms. She tries to go back to her job to kill one of her past patients, but she learns that she can’t. Skye believes that she has more control over herself than the demon. For the entire movie, Skye fights with her mind, ultimately losing.
“Smile 1” and “Smile 2” both depict how the smiling demon possesses and terrorizes its hosts in unique ways while being brilliantly filmed and sharing the same storyline.
