2024 has been the year of horror movies and we're not done yet. Cineworld Horror Season runs throughout October (remember, tickets for these classic movies are just £5) and in the midst of that, we get to enjoy the release of the spine-chilling Smile 2.
Parker Finn returns to direct the sequel to his hit 2022 chiller, which was itself based on the filmmaker's short project Laura Hasn't Slept. The Smile films spin a simple yet diabolically creepy conceit: what if you found yourself haunted by a curse that manifested as a demonic leering face?
The first Smile film gained a lot of mileage out of this premise so we're here to recap the events so far before Smile 2 causes you to break out in a devilish grin this October.
SMILE (2022)
- Therapist Rose Cotter (Sosie Bacon) is left traumatised after her patient commits suicide in front of her while smiling in a sinister fashion
- Before Laura killed herself, she claimed she was being pursued by something that was smiling evilly at her
- The next day Rose is greeted by one of her patients Carl who grins at her and claims she is going to die
- Rose then finds herself plagued by apparently supernatural happenings with her home alarm going off repeatedly and shadowy, smiling figures appearing in dark corners
- Rose visits her former therapist, Dr. Madeline Northcott, who suggests that Rose's problems stem from her childhood, in which she witnessed the overdose death of her abusive and mentally ill mother
- Owing to her increasingly erratic behaviour, Rose's boyfriend believes that she is becoming a danger to herself
- Rose's psychological collapse is precipitated when she unwittingly gifts a dead cat in a box to her nephew on his birthday
- Rose becomes convinced that she is cursed and delves into the mystery, investigating the mysterious death of Laura's grad school professor
- She visits the man's widow Victoria and learns that he had also witnessed a suicide shortly before his own
- Rose asks her ex-boyfriend Joel (Kyle Gallner), a police detective, to review old police records
- They find several cases of people who witnessed someone commit suicide while smiling at them before doing the same to themselves within a week
- Rose and Joel visit the incarcerated murderer Robert Tally who is the sole exception in a long list of suicides that stretch back decades
- Tally is convinced that the entity feeds on trauma and that the only way to escape it is to brutally kill someone else in front of a witness to traumatize them, passing the curse to the witness
- Rose is greeted by the demonic persona of Madeline and imagines herself killing Carl with a knife
- Rose decides to isolate herself at her old family home, reasoning that the entity's curse can't be passed on if she dies alone
- The entity appears as Rose's mother, and it is revealed that Rose chose not to call for help for her mother because of her abusive behavior
- Rose appears to burn the entity alive and later returns to Joel's apartment, only to realise once he starts grinning maniacally that this, too, is a hallucination
- Rose discovers she is still inside her abandoned former home with the entity and Joel comes racing to her rescue
- Rose is confronted by the entity's true form: a monstrous, bestial creature with an enlarged mouth that plunges itself into Laura's body to possess her
- Joel arrives on the scene in time to witness Rose burning herself alive, making him the latest recipient of the curse
SMILE 2 (2024)
- Pop star Skye Riley (Naomi Scott) is preparing to make her glitzy comeback on a massive world tour
- However, she is traumatised by the sudden death of her friend Lewis (Lukas Gage) who kills himself by bashing in his face with a gym weight
- Skye then becomes paranoid that she has been cursed, which manifests on all sides by horribly grinning people
- Skye realises she must delve deep into her tortured past and confront her darkest secrets if she wants to overcome the entity
Up to speed? Then click the link below to book your tickets for Smile 2. It opens at Cineworld on October 18th.
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