Smile 2 director Parker Finn explains the twist ending

“Smile 2” is playing in the cinema and is grinning from ear to ear.

In the sequel to the 2022 breakout hit “Smile,” once again written and directed by Parker Finn, the demonic curse is transferred to a global pop star named Skye Riley (Naomi Scott), who deals with the haunting and at the same time trying to prepare a new world tour. She had recently been institutionalized after an accident that resulted in the death of her boyfriend, played by Ray Nicholson. Is she really being pursued by an ancient supernatural evil? Or is she losing her mind again?

Well, that's the big question.

TheWrap spoke with Finn about the film's ending and where the world of “Smile” might go from here. Big spoiler warning. We're not kidding. We'll go into the essentials here.

What exactly happens at the end of “Smile 2”?

Shortly before the grand finale, Skye is hospitalized due to exhaustion. She needs to get out because she's been contacted by Morris (character actor stalwart Peter Jacobson), a nurse also affected by the demonic force. He believes there is a way to stop this – by lowering the possessed person's heart rate until they are clinically dead, in a room where no one else is. This way the demon has no opportunity to pass on to the next person.

Skye fights her way out of her hospital bed, becoming possessed in the process and ultimately murdering her mother (Rosemarie DeWitt). She escapes from the hospital with the help of her best friend Gemma (Dylan Gelula). But on the way to Jersey she discovers that Gemma is actually the demon. Don't you hate it when that happens?

She gets rid of Gemma and ends up in a freezer in Jersey (an old Pizza Hut, of course), with Morris, who leaves and – wouldn't you know it – the demon makes its presence known. Then we see that none of what we thought happened has happened – Skye is in a puppet, part of her live stage show set. She looks into the audience and sees her mother and her friends. Everyone is cheering her on.

Then the smile demon we saw at the end of the first “Smile” appears on stage. It wears Skye as a kind of suit, literally opening up in front of Skye and using the scar from the car accident as a “zipper”. Just off-screen, we hear Skye mutilating herself as the thousands of people watch in horror. Then we finally see her body fall into frame – her microphone is pushed through her eye and into her brain.

Where did this ending come from?

According to Finn, he knew the ending of the film even before he thought up the rest of the story. When he was thinking about the idea of ​​the curse of smiling afflicting a pop star, he came up with the idea of ​​this ending. “I didn't know how to do it, but I had an idea for some final images. And I thought Okay, this is a trip that I just absolutely love“Finn said. “And I love that the ending of this film mirrors the ending of the first film, but they're also diametrically opposed.” As Finn explained, the first film ended in “this tiny, run-down house in the middle of nowhere where we're alone and were private,” where this new film “takes place on the main stage in what was essentially supposed to be Madison Square Garden, and 20,000 screaming fans in front of it.”

Finn was also drawn to the “meta-commentary” of the moment – ​​“the audience in that arena staring through the screen at the audience in the theater.” He said that this element was intended to raise questions: “Wait a minute, have we got this Did we do that to Skye when we came back and saw Smile 2? Are we somehow complicit?”

The filmmaker “loved that idea so much.” “When you think about celebrities and this idea of ​​a platform and the impact they can have on their audience, it just felt electric to do that,” Finn explained.

Plus, Finn says, it was an opportunity to do “a literal mic drop.”

What about the section before that, in the Pizza Hut freezer?

The whole trip to the Pizza Hut refrigerator in New Jersey raises other questions – most notably: Is hope (and the cruel extinction of hope) part of the haunting?

“I hope it raises the question of whether this is part of people’s journey,” Finn said. “That idea of ​​how it completely and completely breaks you – does it have to get you to that point in your head so that it can then really kick in and just wipe out all hope and do the final break in character that prepares them for that?” last Moment?”

Will this be explored in “Smile 3”?

It could be that the ending of “Smile 2” actually opens up the world. Whether the curse is overcome by watching someone possessed kill themselves, then tens of thousands of people in this area saw Skye's final moments (and how many more watched them via live streams or social media?) . It remains to be seen, as the only thing scarier than a terrible smiling demon is a domestic box office tally.

“Smile 2” is in cinemas now.

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