Parker Finn follows his surprise 2022 hit about a malevolent spirit that jumps hosts via a diabolical grin, this time infecting a troubled pop star with a ton of trauma to feed on.

Parker Finn’s 2022 feature debut, Smile, was transparently molded from chain-possession horror like The Ring and It Follows, in which a death curse is passed from one victim to the next while the agonized protagonist tries to wriggle out of it. Despite its familiarity, the movie worked, in part because the writer-director brought plenty of style and sustained anxiety to the derivative premise but also because the means of transferal was so disturbingly ordinary — a big toothy grin. The film cost a modest $17 million to make and grossed north of $200 million worldwide, which made a sequel inevitable.

Audiences hooked the first time around will likely be back for more, which should give Paramount a head start on the Halloween box office. If Smile 2 is another hit, don’t be surprised to see the franchise continue, especially since this one ends with the promise of contagion on a considerably larger scale.  

That plan goes about as far south as it could go in the wild pre-titles sequence, which is bad news for Lewis (Lukas Gage), the low-level dealer who wanders into the chaos. The macabre sense of humor that factors throughout is evident in the remains of one casualty, whose blood and guts are smeared across the road in — you guessed it — the shape of a smile.

Meanwhile, Skye is preparing to come back from a year out of the spotlight following a near-fatal car crash in which her actor boyfriend Paul (Ray Nicholson) was killed. Photos of her strung out on alcohol and cocaine have been splashed all over the tabloids, but now she’s clean and ready to kick off a major tour, starting in New York City. She gives her first public interview since the accident on The Drew Barrymore Show, whose host seems only mildly self-conscious playing herself.

Pushed by her manager mother Elizabeth (Rosemarie DeWitt) and pampered by her adoring assistant Joshua (Miles Gutierrez-Riley), Skye throws herself into rehearsals. When the vigorous choreography aggravates her back injury from the crash, she keeps it to herself but contacts her former dealer to score some Vicodin. That of course would be Lewis, an old high school acquaintance, who’s coked to the gills and deep in the grip of paranoid delusions when Skye arrives. What she witnesses is truly disturbing, leaving her with no painkillers but plenty of pain.

Dan Kenyon’s dense sound design is another highly effective component, often blurring the lines between ambient noise and composer Cristobal Tapia de Veer’s chilling score, which incorporates clanking, groaning, juddering industrial sounds and leans heavily into distortion.

Scott is terrific at showing the way Skye’s terror plays into her guilt over the people she hurt when her substance abuse issues were out of control. That conflict also makes her to want to keep fulfilling the professional obligations of photo shoots, sound checks, costume fittings and more rehearsals.

Despite her daughter’s escalating series of meltdowns, Elizabeth pushes Skye to stick to the schedule, reminding her that the record company, headed by Darius (Raúl Castillo), has invested millions in the tour. “You need to stay hydrated,” her mother keeps telling her, which yields an amusing running product-placement joke as Skye chugs down endless bottles of Voss water.