“Smile 2” follows the victims of an entity that feeds off of trauma, causing hallucinations and disturbing images that psychologically tortures them until they end their life. This torture is often referred to as a “curse” throughout the movie. The way it’s passed is parasitic in nature – after a person witnesses the suicide or brutal murder involving the previous victim, they are now the new host of the parasite, ultimately following the same routine.

The story was pretty good, but the plot was too similar to the first movie and was really predictable. The only character that was really fleshed out was the main character, Sky Riley. They did well with her personality and background, but the rest of the characters were super forgettable. There was one character, Alfredo, that was presented early on as though he was important to the story but he disappeared after a few scenes.

“Smile 2” handled a lot of hard topics like substance abuse, suicide, and mental health, so if those things are of concern, I would avoid this movie due to them being the central topics of the story and brought up frequently. The movie also had an insane amount of gore. Without warning, gore would just flash on the screen where it didn’t feel needed. Within the intro of the movie alone, three people were massacred.

The movie is extremely body horror based as well as psychological horror. Watching this movie makes you feel uneasy with a pit of uncertainty in your stomach because of how difficult reality is to discern from what was fake. For a horror movie, I enjoyed it, but would probably not watch it again.

Review- 2.5/5