Contains mention of suicide.
Smile won fans over with the terrifying smile that haunted its trailer, but Smile 2 needs to come up with a new clever way to intrigue audiences. The 2022 horror film centered on Dr. Rose Cotter, who was haunted by an entity that appeared as different people with a terrifying smile, warning her that she was going to die soon. The film was about trauma and how it gets passed on to others, told through multiple suicides that relieve the person who killed themselves of trauma but give it to whoever witnesses their suicide.
The film has accumulated $217.4 million at the US Box Office. Paramount recently confirmed Smile 2, seven months after the first film premiered. Smile reeled in fans because of the eerie facial expression that made audiences want to see what the film was all about. It was horrifying every time the trailer came on tv or during a movie theater preview. However, the same marketing tactic won’t work for Smile 2, so filmmakers are going to have to get creative coming up with ways to get fans to tune in for the second film and scare them as much as they did with the first Smile.
Smile 2 Can’t Repeat The Original Movie’s Smiling Gimmick
While the smiling gimmick worked for the first Smile, if filmmakers do the same thing again, it will get boring. In today’s society, people move on quickly, and they’re constantly in search of the next big thing. In order to keep audiences entertained, Smile 2 has to take some risks and switch things up so fans will be just as interested as they were in the first film. It also would be a lot harder to scare audiences if the film is doing the same thing its predecessor did. There would be no shock value, and audiences would know what to expect going into the film.
The most successful horror franchises have remained relevant for so long by constantly going against fan expectations, so they never know what is coming next. Making another film where entities haunt the main character with a terrifying smile would be unoriginal and would ruin the uniqueness that made it so scary. Since the word “smile” is in the title, it’s going to be difficult to come up with a new idea while also staying true to the film and its theme.
However, the change is necessary as no one wants to see the same thing twice. The Scream franchise is a prime example of keeping things fresh for six installments while also staying true to its slasher genre and Ghostface villain. Smile 2 can lean on the horror franchises that came before it to figure out how to not repeat the same ideas twice.
How Smile 2 Can Change The Title’s Meaning
Smile 2 could pick up where the last film left off, with Joel, who is now cursed with trauma from watching Rose kill herself, facing his own entity. While smiles will have to be incorporated in some compacity because of the film’s title, there are other ways filmmakers can terrify fans. From Pennywise to the Joker, devious smiles have always been frightening, but there are other horrible facial expressions filmmakers can play around with.
They can even tie the new facial expression entities into a different form of trauma. The first Smile focused on suicide, so Smile 2 can focus on a different topic like murder or abuse. If the entity has an angry expression, it can be just as horrifying as the smile. In order to incorporate smiles into the film, smiling in the second film could be a positive thing, like smiling can be the way to free a character from an entity.
Smile’s Creator Already Wants The Sequel To Be Different
Luckily Smile‘s creator has no intentions of doing the same thing twice. Smile creator Parker Finn was shocked by the success of his film and never thought a second one would be in such high demand. Finn says he purposely left some elements of Smile unexplored to leave room for a potential sequel where he could further dive into those aspects.
However, Finn confirms he never wants to do the same thing twice by making a repeat of his first film. Instead, he’d rather find ways to surprise audiences again. He didn’t give any hints as to what he could do to make the film different, but it’s good to see he’s dedicated to exploring a different angle in Smile 2 than he did in the first film.
