Parker Finn has a lot to smile about. His first film, Smile, was one of 2022’s biggest box office surprises – a word-of-mouth horror hit that grossed over US$200 million worldwide. Its sequel Smile 2 – a gorier, nastier and more ambitious follow-up – is a critical and commercial win so far.
The first Smile was an insular, almost claustrophobic, study of a psychiatrist who becomes haunted by the Smile Entity – a demonic parasite that terrorises, and eventually possesses, its host. This time around, its target is Skye Riley (played by Aladdin’s Naomi Scott): a pop star on a comeback tour who’s got some demons of her own.
Broadsheet sat down with Finn at SXSW Sydney to talk about the challenges of finding fright in a bright environment, trojan horsing a character drama into a horror movie, and why being a pop star is terrifying – even if you’re not possessed by a demon.
Hi Parker! If I look tired it’s because I watched Smile 2 yesterday – so I didn’t sleep that well.
I apologise.
The film follows a pop star, and it’s set in New York. Where the first film had so many classically scary settings, like the suburbs and a mental health hospital, was it challenging to find the fear factor in places like the city or big stadiums?
Definitely. And I wanted to challenge myself and my collaborators to do something that felt fresh and unexpected. To be in this world – of a mega pop star – that should be glammy and glitzy and shiny and has no business feeling terrifying? I like the idea of taking Smile and sort of invading that world and turning it into this very cold, frightening, almost alien landscape that our character Skye Riley, played by Naomi Scott, feels suffocated by.
Watching the movie, it was the first time I’d realised how terrifying it would be to be a pop star, even taking out the horror element.
I dove into as much research as I could. I watched every documentary and read every essay, article, interview – everything, and it felt so interesting how this world can be so consuming, and fandoms can be so confusing.
And it struck me that Skye had very few people that she could actually confide in about the things that she was experiencing. We can all relate to that.
The expectations that are put on these megastars – who are elevated to a godlike status – there are real human beings behind that and not everybody can relate to being an internationally famous pop star, but I wanted to see if I could get audiences to connect to and relate to Skye, the human being.
Smile 2 is a much bigger film than the first one, which was made on a shoestring budget. How did you adjust to having more resources to work with?
Well, certainly the intention was to go bigger. But bigger just for bigger’s sake is never something that I want to chase. I want to make sure that it feels organic to the story that I’m telling and so Skye’s world is inherently bigger than Rose’s world. And you know, yes, more resources, but we’re also making way more movie – so the challenges get much larger. I almost feel like this film had less breathing room for myself and for the crew because it was such a challenging film to put on. Not only are we making a very intense, intentional horror film but we’re also creating this world of this pop star. It almost felt like we were making two movies at once.
Yeah, and I actually could have easily just watched a movie about Skye struggling with her tour coming up.
With Skye, I wanted to make sure the human story, the drama, could be its own film without the supernatural influence. To me, I felt like I knew we had a very strong character story at the core of this thing, and I really love that about it.
Smile 2 is in cinemas now.
