This article contains spoilers.
Being a celebrity is a cruel business. Gazed at in adoration by many, seen by none. People hang on to your every word, but no one really hears your cries for help. Your pain sells records and your breakdowns are fodder for public entertainment. And even the most glamorous parts of the job can feel like, well, a job.
One of the smartest things about Smile 2, one of the scariest movies this year, is how it imaginatively reworks the standard trauma plot of its predecessor to make popstar metaphors terrifyingly literal instead. If everyone wants a piece of singer Skye Riley (played by Naomi Scott), none do more than the parasitic virus that has infected her mind and plans to consume her. Skye’s first appearance in the film is of her in a music video surrounded by ghosts, eerily foreshadowing how she spends the rest of the film haunted.
2024 has been a fantastic year for horror, with films not only drawing from the past—both Longlegs and Trap were inspired by the 1991 psychological thriller The Silence Of The Lambs—but also reflecting current fears with Immaculate, The First Omen, Alien: Romulus, and Apartment 7A, all depicting the forced-birth anxieties of a world in which Roe v Wade has been overturned. Then came Heretic, which gave us the Hugh Grant performance of the year and the non-linear thriller, Strange Darling (with Smile star, Kyle Gallner, in the lead) which was another standout.
But besides all this, a series of movies this year focussed on the horrors of being, or wanting to be, a celebrity. Late Night With The Devil follows a ratings-obsessed talk show host (David Dastmalchian) who, having given it his all, has only his soul left to barter. In The Substance, an ageing star (Demi Moore) is relentless in her pursuit of applause, even if it becomes the soundtrack to her own demise. Apartment 7A’s young aspiring dancer (Julia Garner) seeks success, but finds only a predatory industry. In MaXXXine, starlets are indistinguishable from sacrificial lambs. And Smile 2 has a lot in common with M. Night Shyamalan’s Trap, in which a young pop star (Saleka Night) is cornered and kidnapped by a serial killer (Josh Hartnett) who gains access to her through a concert meet-and-greet.
Still from Smile 2
In movies like Smile 2, screaming fans sound not like adulation but a feeding frenzy that Skye reflexively adopts a defense mechanism against. Several times, the camera pushes in on her face in tight closeups, a visual reminder of how little privacy popstars are afforded. The cityscape is often depicted as topsy turvy, underling how Skye’s life has turned upside down and she still feels off-balance. There are numerous shots of her luxurious, spacious hotel room interiors, but these only emphasise just how alone she is. She has an overbearing, nitpicky momager (Rosemarie DeWitt), whose immediate instinct is for how her daughter is perceived, rather than how she really feels. And she’s always expected to perform, even when the cameras are off.
In that sense, Smile 2 is reminiscent of several other fictional films and shows, like Vox Lux, The Idol, and Black Mirror’s ‘Rachel, Jack and Ashley Too’ episode, but it’s also a story we’ve seen play out in real life. The lyrics to one of Skye’s songs—“Doctor I’m going insane. I’ve got a bad mind, get me a new brain”—feel reminiscent of Selena Gomez’s ‘My Mind and Me’ track. At a meet-and-greet, a creepy male fan grips Skye too tightly, harbours delusions of them being together, invades her space, and makes her uncomfortable. Next, she’s approached by a little girl with braces and pigtails, whose demonic smile is a sure sign of the supernatural creature. In this way, the film draws parallels between a boundary-breaking fan and an evil entity. Both are equally unnerving. Skye later hallucinates that same man breaking into her apartment, a plot point that rings uncomfortably true, particularly since earlier this year, singer Chappell Roan spoke out against aggressive fans who’ve kissed her without her consent, harassed her at an airport, and even stalked her at her family home and hotel.
Like a hamster on a wheel, Skye doesn’t have the luxury of breaking down. Her trauma-induced outbursts can be misread as diva tantrums, her erratic behaviour fuels suspicion that she’s on drugs again, but it is the entity that is warping her reality and slowly driving its targets insane. In the case of a pop star who is so fragile and under such immense strain already, its task couldn’t be easier. The pressure she’s under calls to mind Taylor Swift’s track ‘I Can Do It With A Broken Heart’, which details her private heartbreak contrasted against the public facade she put on during her record-breaking The Eras Tour. “All the pieces of me shattered as the crowd was chanting more!,” goes the song.
For Skye, the tragedy is that the noise won’t stop even when the crowds go home—because it’s all in her head. To be infected with Smile 2’s supernatural entity is to experience a terrifying loss of control, but isn’t that just the life of a pop star who can often feel like a puppet and for whom everything is micromanaged down to the minutest degree? At a time when the business of being a pop star is bigger than ever comes a new genre of pop star horror that exposes the real pressures of living in the public eye, along with some killer choreography.
