“'Smile 2' review: A skillfully unsettling sequel”

Depicting the life of a diva pop star – or at least making it convincing – isn't the easiest thing for a film to do. There are too many real life counterparts. Director Brady Corbet (“The Brutalist”) is about halfway there with Natalie Portman in “Vox Lux.” Lady Gaga draws on elements of her own legend, but is smart enough to play the heroine of A Star Is Born not a version of herself, created a figure for eternity. More recently, M. Night Shyamalan seemed to make “Trap” primarily to give his budding musician daughter, Saleka Shyamalan, the role of a pop singer – which she did brilliantly in concert, but less convincingly in the backstage scenes. So when you hear that Smile 2, Parker Finn's sequel to his effective if overstuffed horror film from two years ago, is about a pop star, you might not be expecting a deep dive into the pop music universe.

After all, the first “Smile” was a movie in which people were possessed by a strange demon, causing them to have a breakdown over the course of a week, after which they would give someone else a devious nightmare smile and commit suicide right in front of them, after which the demon passed into the body of the witness to the suicide. Complicated! Or maybe just confusing. The premise of “Smile” made perfect sense, as the host-hopping demon was a descendant of those from “It Follows” and (dating back to the '80s) “The Hidden.” But the film, as vividly directed as it was, often seemed to be just a glorifying vehicle for all those self-destructive deaths and frozen grins.

“Smile 2” is different. It has all the stuff, but is a horror film that strives to create a real emotional center. And that's because it really is around a pop star – a dance-queen idol named Skye Riley (played with yes-she-really-could-be-one authenticity by British actress and singer Naomi Scott) who fends off all-too-human demons from the start. A year earlier, Skye was seriously injured in a car accident while under the influence of drugs that killed her movie star boyfriend. Since then, she's been recovering (in every way) and is about to embark on a comeback tour. We see her reintroduce herself to her audience with an appearance in Drew (where Drew Barrymore plays himself), where she shows off her new Edie Sedgwick hairstyle along with her practiced air of chastened arrogance.

The film stays true to Skye's perspective and takes us through her life – the rehearsals and costume changes, the compulsive guzzling of designer bottles of Voss water, her fractious relationship with her doting but parasitic manager mother (Rosemarie DeWitt), her case of hair-raising impulse trichotillomania is getting worse and her fans are lining up to pose with her in “crass” selfies. Almost every scene of “Smile 2” is imbued with the awareness that being a pop star in the 21st century means acting like an industry: a never-ending exercise in corporate image management.

Sometimes when you look at someone like Ariana Grande or Olivia Rodrigo, it's not hard to see the vulnerable human being behind the sophisticated star facade. Naomi Scott shows you both in “Smile 2”. With Skye dealing with a demon that has invaded her, plus the memories of that nightmarish car accident, not to mention all the destruction her selfishness has caused (that demon likes to have some built-in mental torment to work with). can), her life and career begins to fall apart. But to everyone around her who can't see the demon, it looks like she's going crazy. And in a way, maybe she is. “Smile 2” is a short film horror parable, but the story it tells is that pop fame drives you crazy. The film is hardly subtle, but Parker Finn has become a clever filmmaker who manages to make reality seem like a hallucination and hallucinations seem like reality.

As before, the smiles can come from almost anywhere (like the tween girl with braces in the fan queue), but they often come from someone close to Skye. And that can be as unsettling as a jump scare. The horror begins when she visits Lewis (Lukas Gage), an old high school buddy who is now a high-end drug dealer. While taking cocaine, he has become a babbling head who then commits suicide by hitting himself in the face with a 35-pound circular training weight. It's all very flashy, but then Skye makes contact with Gemma (Dylan Gelula), the unpretentious best friend who blew her away when she was at the height of her drug habit. Their reunion in Skye's apartment captivates us, so we hardly expect Gemma to bring out “The Smile.” One of the film's scariest highlights is when Skye is visited by her backup dancers – a sequence that would make Bob Fosse smile from his grave.

Skye is asked to be a presenter at a children's charity event. She has to read a pre-written speech on a teleprompter, which turns into a literal bad dream that makes her think outside the box. The scene climaxes with her late friend coming on stage with “The Smile” (the fact that Ray Nicholson is the actor son of Jack Nicholson makes him genetically predisposed to it). When she counters this mirage by pushing the completely wrong person off the stage, it's a moment of pure comedy.

The best thing about “Smile 2” is that it keeps the audience off balance, starting with the way Cristobal Tapia de Veer's unsettling electronic score affects us. Skye's story is full of trap doors that keep opening into her repressed reality, and Naomi Scott plays this with great skill. She's not just a horror movie brawler – we develop a sympathetic understanding of Skye and her plight, which is that she's surrounded by henchmen but feels increasingly alone. When she goes to a bar to meet Morris (Peter Jacobson), who has a plan to defeat the demon, all she has to do is agree to have her heart stopped for two minutes! – A sudden rush of fans wanting to connect with her on TikTok seems to be as much of a nightmare as anything else in the film.

But when Skye finds herself in the freezer of an abandoned Pizza Hut to put Morris' plan into action, the film has become too restless and too long for its own good. The ending will leave audiences stunned, and that's because Parker Finn, now in love with the “Smile” mythology he created, turns out terrific. The film reaches its climax with body horror maximalism coupled with a minimum of logic. Until then, however, it elicits honest inspiration from the troubling hothouse of unreality that is pop stardom.