What makes Smile 2 work is the way it builds off the first one. It's the 'girl, so confusing' remix of Smile: intractably linked to the thoughts and themes and rules and scares of the original.
It doesn't take much to see Smile 2's ending coming. This is not an insult; predictability is nothing to denigrate, if done right, and Smile 2 certainly provides the perverse pleasures that make the foregone conclusion really sing.
Director Parker Finn finds new ways to let the Smile demon circle Skye, plucking away her defenses the same way she pulls at her hair.
Though that haunting grin may always twist the knife in the same way, no two attacks on her senses are the same, leaving her (and us) constantly unmoored.
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