Blood on White Satin
Directed by Parker Finn
Starring Naomi Scott, Rosemarie DeWitt, Peter Jacobson
Released October 18th, 2024
Rated R
Parker Finn is a talented young filmmaker who clearly had a ball spending a bit more of Paramount Pictures’ money to make a sequel to Smile, his small-budgeted surprise hit from 2022. Smile 2 is a big sequel in many ways, from budget, to story, to length. Clocking in at two hours and twelve minutes, it’s much longer than most horror films, and that could be due to it not being a standard horror film. While the first film was lean and mean, Smile 2 is less concerned with jump scares and more interested in examining the lingering guilt associated with navigating a life of recovery after years of bad decisions as a result of addiction. Heady stuff, and safe to say not what anyone was expecting from the movie. Especially since Smile 2 covers this terrain through the life of a pop star, giving the film the opportunity to be visually different from the first film.
Smile 2 is bright, loud, and colorful, as we follow disgraced pop star Skye Riley (Naomi Scott) as she attempts to embark on a world tour following a public tragedy that involved the death of her boyfriend (Ray Nicholson). Riley’s once promising music career became tabloid fodder, but Elizabeth (Rosemarie DeWitt), her demanding momager, has all of the answers to how Riley should stage her comeback. All Riley has to do is shut up and comply. Mother knows best. Fresh out of a stint in rehab and sporting a new hairstyle, Riley’s tour preparation involves learning choreography with her dancers, trying on space-age costumes, and drinking lots of water. But soon enough things go sideways for Riley, as she watches a gruesome suicide and is soon plagued by unnerving smiles in her direction. I found myself so enamored with the story of the damaged pop star trying to hold her personal life together while reviving her music career, that I almost felt like the horror elements got in the way!
Later in the film, a character named Morris (Peter Jacobson) shows up to act as an exposition machine to help the audience understand the evil Riley has been experiencing. If you were to ask me exactly how the entity works, I’m not sure I could explain it to you. It’s maybe a demon or maybe a parasite and if you become infected by it, you will kill yourself in less than a week. You’ll do this in front of a witness, who will then become infected and start the whole process again. At least, I think that’s the lore. I’ve seen two movies featuring this evil entity, and that’s the best I can come up with. If we are ever treated to a third installment, I feel like the filmmakers are going to really have to lay this process out to us in a clear, straightforward fashion. For now, mythology doesn’t really matter, as both films work well enough that audiences are content to just go along with it.
Some fans of the first film may be upset that its compact, gritty nature is not repeated here, outside of a visceral opening sequence. Smile 2 trades the intimacy of the first film for a large-scale story, with impressive sets, costumes, and visual effects. It may not be as flat-out scary as the first film, but I do not think it aims to be. This film’s tonal shift reminds me of how Tobe Hooper approached the sequel to his 1974 masterpiece, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. Instead of trying to replicate the cinema vérité style of the original, for the 1986 sequel he did something totally different. I would hesitate to classify Smile 2 as a horror comedy, but given the campy nature of pop stardom, I laughed more than I would have expected. “I don’t want to die in the back of a Pizza Hut” is a funny line. There are also elements of many giallo films on display, especially Suspiria, and in a music video for one of Skye Riley’s songs we see visuals that look like something pulled right out of The Hunger. Parker Finn has crafted a horror sequel unlike any other in recent memory, something ambitious and audacious, a grand visual feast with memorable songs, bloody deaths, and a go-for-broke Naomi Scott.
As Skye Riley, Scott is a revelation. She’s in almost every scene of the movie, giving a tour-de-force performance that’s as good as anything I’ve ever seen in any genre film, just as strong as Ellen Burstyn in Requiem for a Dream, Essie Davis in The Babadook, and Toni Collette in Hereditary. Scott transitions multiple times between being a confident performer on stage rehearsing songs for her tour to being a terrified woman backstage nursing many physical and mental wounds. It’s one of my favorite performances of the year, and absolutely deserves to be in the upcoming awards season conversation. The supporting cast are all aces, but this is Scott’s show.
For the second time in 2024, audiences have had a front row seat to murderous happenings at a fictional pop star’s concert. Earlier this year, M. Night Shyamalan released Trap, starring his daughter Saleka Night Shyamalan as the pop star Lady Raven. While Lady Raven’s songs and stagecraft were reminiscent of Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour, Skye Riley’s concert presentation in Smile 2 reminded me more of Lady Gaga. Despite surface similarities, the two movies are very different, with Trap being a fun Hitchcockian thriller and Smile 2 being more of a grand guignol experience. As I write this review, I am listening to The Skye Riley EP, a six-song collection of catchy pop songs performed by Naomi Scott. I really like these songs! I recommend putting together a playlist of bouncy pop songs performed by fictional characters. Lady Raven, Skye Riley, heck, even Celeste from Vox Lux. That’s sure to make you smile.