SPOILER SPECIAL
Smile 2
DIRECTORPARKER FINNON THE SHOCKS OF HIS STUNNING SEQUEL
WORDS CHRIS HEWITT
PARKER FINN’S SMILE 2 was one of the best mainstream horrors of last year, a slickly directed scarefest that built upon the world and mythology established in the first film, and centred on an astonishing Naomi Scott as a pop star whose already fragile grip on reality is further weakened when she’s assaulted by the smiling demon. Here, Finn talks us through the key moments…
SILLY, JOEL
The first movie ended with the curse being passed on to Kyle Gallner’s cop, Joel. Rather than follow Joel’s story for an entire movie, Finn restricts it to the film’s prologue, a single-shot sequence in which an increasingly panicked Joel tries to pass the curse onto some local drug dealers, it all ending very badly via interface with a truck. “I wanted to drop us into a world that felt like nothing we had seen before,” says Finn. “You wouldn’t even know it’s a Smile film. And by the end, I knew I wanted to announce that this is a Smile film, very overtly, with what Joel’s body is turned into.” Finn is referring to a blood-streak on the ground that forms a familiar shape. A frown turned upside down, you could say.