This article was originally published on ComicBookMovie.com.
In Smile 2, about to embark on a new world tour, global pop sensation Skye Riley (Naomi Scott) begins experiencing increasingly terrifying and inexplicable events. Overwhelmed by the escalating horrors and the pressures of fame, Skye is forced to face her dark past to regain control of her life before it spirals out of control.
We can't recommend the sequel highly enough, particularly as it ups the ante and delivers some of the best scares we've seen on screen this year. At the helm is Smile franchise creator Parker Finn who returns to write and direct.
Last week, we got to sit down with the filmmaker for a discussion about his approach to this movie. As well as breaking down how he directs the "Smile," Finn also explains the Entity's evolution and the immense amount of work that went into creating its new and improved design.
Finn also talks us through that unforgettable opening sequence featuring Smile star Kyle Gallner's return and the ways Taylor Swift and pop star fandom in general inspired Naomi Scott's Skye Riley.
You can check out the full interview with Finn in the player below.
I recently had the pleasure of speaking to Rosemarie DeWitt, and she said you have a very precise way of directing an actor to perform the ‘Smile’ - can you maybe take us through that?
Yeah, absolutely. You know, when I cast these films, I’m always casting for the dramatic performance and then knowing that I can coach the ‘Smile’ on the other end. Rather than the other way around! One of the things we do with the ‘Smile,’ of course, is…it’s a two-wide smile but really, for me, the trick is all about the eyes. It’s these eyes that sort of have this detached, dead stare. This unblinking stare that breaks the fourth wall. When you combine that with a certain positioning of the head that harkens back to the Kubrick stare, along with how we frame it and utilise sound design and everything else, it can create this really unsettling recipe.
We do see more of the Entity in this film and it’s an incredible moment. How did you work on bringing that to life and evolving the look of what we saw in the first film?
I always planned to show restraint on how much we’d show the Entity again. It just shows up at the very end of the film for a couple of shots and we made sure it isn’t just something…we feel its presence throughout but we don’t see it the whole time. Oftentimes, the unknown is scarier than anything else. In re-approaching it, I wanted to go bigger and bolder and make sure that its emergence happens in a different, unexpected way from the first film. Taking that gruesome scene in the first film and trying to double down and make it tenfold as screwed up…I worked with Alec Gillis and his studio to bring it to life again. Alec worked on the first one as well and we talked about going bigger so Alec actually said it was the biggest thing he and his team built since they created the Alien Queen all the way back in Aliens. It involved a lot of design and testing of how we were going to make this work. There are multiple performers inside it, puppeteers surrounding it, and working with them and then my VFX team at Rodeo to create this hybrid thing at the end really brings it to life. It was really, really exciting to do.
On the opposite end of the film, we have a fantastic opening with Kyle Gallner’s character Joel which really sets the tone. Was it important to you heading into this sequel to have that connective tissue?
Yeah, I knew the second film was always going to have its own unique identity but I wanted to have that connective tissue and make sure that Smile was flowing through its DNA. Also, we ended the first film on Joel’s face and so it felt correct to start the second film on his face several days later. I mean, I love working with Kyle and will try to always put him in whatever I’m making because he’s the best and I love that guy. I wanted to make sure that while it’s connective tissue, it’s unlike anything we did in the first Smile. So, it felt really exciting to create this tense, claustrophobic action-thriller scene with this black cloud of the Smile curse hanging over it. And to execute it in a single unbroken take was a really exciting challenge that I set for myself and my team. It required a lot of prep work to make that happen but I’m really excited with how it came together and I feel like it launches us headfirst into the sequel and announces that Smile is back and meaner than ever.
Something we don’t see in many horror film is Skye Riley, a character brought to life brilliantly by Naomi. Was there a little Taylor Swift influence there while tapping into that pop stardom and how much fun was it to combine those elements?
It was really fun and that was part of me trying to do something really unexpected for this film. I love pop music and it felt like the world of a pop star was so far away from the first film. I wanted to see if I could make something that felt glitzy and glammy, and fun feel cold, menacing, and threatening. And almost alien. That was a fun challenge and Naomi was the perfect storm to bring this character to life. I mean, she’s a remarkable actress who has got this incredible gravitas and is also capable of really human raw emotion. She sings all the original songs, she performs the choreography and is a true triple threat and a great partner in crime on this. The Swiftie fandom was certainly…it’s one of the biggest in the world, so of course it was on our minds. We looked at a lot of different performers for inspiration and took different things but also wanted to make sure that Skye felt like a unique creation that was truly her own.
Smile 2 arrives on Digital on November 19 and hits 4K Ultra HD, Blu-ray and DVD on January 21, 2025.