(Spoilers for the first films ending and the beginning of the second film.)
Smile 2, the sequel released on October 18th, 2024, directed and written by Parker Finn. The film stars Naomi Scott as Skye Riley, a popstar who is preparing for her comeback tour after her substance abuse struggle and car crash that killed her actor boyfriend Paul Hudson, played by Ray Nicholson. The rest of the cast includes, Kyle Gallner returning to reprise his role as Joel, a police officer who was previously cursed by the smile entity, Rosemary DeWitt as Elizabeth Riley, Skye’s mother and manager, Lukas Gage as Lewis, a drug dealer and Skye’s former classmate, Miles Gutierrez-Riley as Joshua, Elizabeth and Skye’s assistant, Peter Jacobson as Morris, a nurse who has tracked down the smile entities actions after it killed his brother, Dylan Gelula as Gemma, Skye’s estranged best friend, Raul Castillo as Darius, the head of Skye’s record company. Additionally, Drew Barrymore appears as herself, interviewing Skye Riley on her talk show, Director Parker Finn appearing as a photographer, the likeness of Sosie Bacon as Rose Cotter appears Via one of Joel’s Hallucinations, and Trevor Newlin appears as the smile entity.
The overall plot, without spoiling as much as possible, is that the curse continues through Joel who sneaks into a drughouse and accidentally passes the curse onto Lewis, and as he tries to make his escape he gets ran over by a car. Now we cut to Skye who, has been through extensive drug treatment after her car crash with Paul, despite her constant supervision from her assistant Joshua and her Mother, she sneaks out to meet Lewis so she can get some pain medications for her injury that she got from the car crash. When she gets there, Lewis is screaming and panicking before he collapses in what looks like a seizure, and then rises with a smile on his face as he picks up a barbell plate and smashes his face. Seeing that, Skye almost calls the police and then realizes that she cant be caught in a house full of drugs because people would start thinking she is using them again.
Director Parker Finn purposefully left parts of the first film ambiguous, with several plot points unresolved, to create the opportunity to explore those details in another sequel. He noted that while additional Smile films might explore the backstory of the entity, he would still like to keep its mysterious nature intact, adding that the follow-up film (which is supposed to start production sometime next year) will be notably different from the first two as he believes “There is still a lof of interesting stuff to explore in the world of Smile. I’d want to make sure that there’s a new, exciting, fresh way into it that the audience isn’t anticipating.”
As of December 9th, the film has grossed $68.9 million in the United States and Canada, and $69.1 million in other territories for a worldwide total of $138 million.
