Smile 2s Ending Made The Most Obvious Twist Work Perfectly

Warning: This article contains SPOILERS for Smile 2

Although Smile 2’s ending should have been exceptionally obvious, the horror sequel managed to make the twist feel like a genuine surprise thanks to some incredibly clever misdirections. Director Parker Finn’s sequel Smile 2 builds on the world established by 2022’s sleeper hit Smile from its opening scene onward. The bravura opening sequence sees Smile’s doomed antihero Joel venture into the trap house of some drug dealers so he can pass the curse onto them, only for him to accidentally also implicate Lukas Gage’s luckless small-time drug dealer Lewis. This bodes badly for Naomi Scott’s Skye.

A traumatized pop star, Skye Riley suffers from chronic pain and PTSD after a car crash that killed her boyfriend, Paul Hudson. Skye relies on Lewis to provide her with Vicodin, but gets much more than she bargained for when he takes his own life in front of her while under the Smile Entity’s control. This passes the curse onto Skye and, as the pressure mounts around her big comeback tour, the musician’s grip on reality becomes increasingly tenuous. This leads to Smile 2’s brutal twist ending, a shock that should have been glaringly obvious but isn’t.

Smile 2’s Ending Does Include A Mass Curse At Skye Riley’s Concert

Fans Guessed This Twist As Soon As Smile 2’s Premise Was Revealed

From the moment that the sequel’s premise was announced, countless commentators guessed that Smile 2’s story would end with Skye succumbing to the Entity at a concert and cursing the entire crowd. Fan theories online argued that this ending was almost inevitable since it was the most dramatic way for the curse to go viral. Moreover, the decision to make the sequel’s main character a famous pop star instead of an ordinary civilian seemed like a clear path to getting more victims exposed to the Entity’s influence. Although Smile 2 did utilize this exact ending, it was somehow surprising.

Smile 2 led viewers down a winding garden path, only using the obvious twist long after that ending appeared to be impossible. Fan theories about Smile 2’s ending seemed to grow increasingly irrelevant as the sequel’s plot unfolded. First, Skye made a disastrous appearance at a charity event that ended with her accidentally tackling an elderly woman off the stage. Then, she met a family member of one of the curse’s earlier victims who had a hare-brained scheme to stop the Entity by temporally stopping Skye’s heart. Then, Skye murdered her own mother while trapped in a rehab facility.

Smile 2’s Misleading Story Made Its Predictable Twist More Satisfying

Skye’s Story Helped The Twist Work

By the time Skye had unknowingly killed her mother, fled rehab, and volunteered to be temporarily killed by this random stranger to hopefully stop the curse, viewers had completely forgotten about the possibility of her playing a comeback concert. Thus, the idea of Skye unleashing the curse on a huge captive audience was pushed to the back of the audience’s mind as this seemed increasingly impossible. Then, Smile 2 audaciously repeated Smile‘s Stephen King-inspired twist when the sequel revealed the entire final act took place entirely in Skye’s mind, and she was actually standing onstage ready to start singing.

Smile 2’s twist ending is not, in itself, particularly innovative. 2017’s The Ring reboot Rings and 2019’s The Cleansing Hour, which even starred the Smile franchise’s Kyle Gallner, both end by implying that countless people have simultaneously been cursed by viewing the events of the movie via livestream. Once Smile 2’s heroine was revealed to be a performer, it didn’t take a genius to work out that her demise would take place onstage, be witnessed by innumerable people in person and online, and subsequently give the Smile franchise’s demonic Entity more victims than ever before.

Smile 2 Expands On The Original Smile’s Famous Twist Ending

Both Smile Movies Use Fake Events To Mislead Viewers

Thus, it was the execution of Smile 2’s twist, rather than the twist itself, that made the ending so ingenious. Smile 2’s ending makes an obvious twist impossible to predict by showing viewers the same misdirection that the monster uses to confuse and disorient Skye. It is not quite clear when the Entity’s lies begin and reality ends, since the events before Skye arrived at rehab could reasonably be things that actually happened within the movie’s reality. Skye’s mother is alive at the concert, so her death is definitely part of the Entity’s elaborate mirage.

However, the fact that Gemma was never real means Skye’s hallucinations may begin much, much earlier in the movie. In Smile, about ten minutes of the movie’s ending takes place in the heroine’s head. In the sequel, potentially half the movie is an imaginary delusion cooked up by the demon. It is not even clear if Smile 2’s Morris is a real person, or if he is merely the Entity in disguise. This ambiguity makes Smile 2’s ending even scarier and more effective.

Director

Parker Finn

Release Date

October 18, 2024

Distributor(s)

Paramount Pictures