Smile 2 (2024) on Netflix
Pop star Skye Riley is preparing a comeback tour after a public struggle with addiction. A back injury sends her to a former classmate for painkillers, and the visions begin.
- Netflix3.8/5
- IMDb6.7/10153,522 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes86%
Trailer
Plot summary
The pop star Skye Riley is mounting a comeback tour while she recovers from drug addiction and from a crash that killed her boyfriend, Paul Hudson. Her mother, Elizabeth, manages her and keeps her under constant supervision. When a back injury in rehearsals leaves her in pain, Skye slips away to buy Vicodin from Lewis Fregoli, a former classmate. She witnesses something at his home that she cannot explain, then leaves without telling anyone. From then on she is plagued by visions, among them Paul, her assistant Joshua and Lewis, all smiling. Skye reaches out to her estranged friend Gemma, and a stranger sends her a text claiming to know she was at Lewis's place and warning her that she is in danger.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Smile 2 (2024)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- The casting of Ray Nicholson was an homage to the role his father Jack Nicholson played: Jack Torrance in The Shining (1980).
- Parker Finn built the ending as a meta moment, with the concert audience in the arena staring through the screen at the audience in the cinema, raising the question of whether coming back for a sequel made viewers complicit in Skye's fate.
- The film was marketed by building up its fictional pop star as a real artist: an Instagram account, @SkyeRileyNation, teased Skye Riley in June 2024, billboards followed, and the song "Blood on White Satin" was released and used in the first trailer.
- Naomi Scott, cast in December 2023 as the pop star Skye Riley, said the role was inspired by Lady Gaga in the early 2010s as well as Britney Spears.
- Writer-director Parker Finn deliberately left parts of the first Smile ambiguous, with plotlines unresolved, so that he would have those details to explore in a sequel.
