Tuesday, November 19, 2024

Smile 2 (2024)

The biggest surprise I had here was learning, after watching the end credits, that Naomi Scott is a Londoner. 

 
 

 
 
The reviews all go on about the 'jump scares' and yet I can't really remember a single one. This movie didn't really 'scare' me at all, and yet it was thrilling.

Much of that has to do with Scott's central performance, surely one of the best ever by a female lead in the genre (all the better perhaps as I now know she was also performing an accent throughout) - as a pop diva, already pursued by her inner demons, but unfortunately also acquiring another rather more substantial and outer one early on in the story.
 
Prior to that moment I was struggling to recall the first film and its basic mechanism, but then I started to see how Finn Parker was skillfully and entertainingly blending the tropes of Horror with those of the performing arts, and this became so fascinating, along with the star's psychological disintegration, that I stopped fretting about the conceit carried over from the original.
 

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