Smile 2 director Parker Finn has revealed that Amy Winehouse was among the inspirations for the movie, which looks at the struggles of public figures.
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The director told Entertainment Weekly that he also consulted the media about Britney Spears when working on the sequel to 2022’s Smile – which was released today (October 18) – while Whitney Houston was also kept in mind.
Discussing Naomi Scott’s character Skye Riley, a huge pop star who struggles with substance abuse, the death of her boyfriend, and physical and auditory hallucinations, he said, “I wanted to raise the question, did we do this to Skye? By us coming back for a Smile 2, have we done this to her?”
Finn explained that he wanted to take the sequel in an unexpected direction – in the first movie, Sosie Bacon played a therapist embroiled in a curse in which a mysterious entity inhabits victims, making them die by suicide. Whoever witnesses the suicide becomes the entity’s next target.
He continued, “When I started thinking about ideas, early on, any of the ideas that started coming to me in the first month I was thinking about it, I threw them away. If I’m coming up with these too quickly, they’re too obvious; it’s too expected. I wanted to push for something where people would be like, ‘I can’t believe this is where Smile went.’”
He found inspiration from “tragic” musicians, particularly those in the ‘27 Club’, like Winehouse, Kurt Cobain, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and Jim Morrison.
“Certainly, Amy Winehouse was on my mind. Britney Spears, of course. We did a little tiny nod in the film; they mention that Skye is 27, which felt apropos to the character,” Finn explained.
“Certainly those tragic stories, I was watching everything I could: documentaries, interviews, essays, articles, even Whitney Houston; there were a lot of women I was looking at who get destroyed by this process. I didn’t want to point to anyone in particular; I just wanted to take that, glean it, and filter it into this unique character.”
NME described Smile 2 as a “middling facsimile of [Finn’s] hit scary movie” in a three-star review, adding: “Sadly, Smile 2 doesn’t feel as fresh as its predecessor. Partly because it borrows liberally from films like Flatliners (and tries to out-gore The Substance for all the bloody prosthetics). Other films, like Brady Corbet’s Vox Lux, have also done the teen pop star narrative better.
“And in essence this is just a re-run of the first movie, just in a slightly glitzier environment. But thanks to Naomi Scott, who previously featured in Guy Ritchie’s live-action version of Aladdin, there’s a flawed female heroine to root for. Is it scary? Rarely, to be honest. But it knows how to twist the knife, at least.”
Meanwhile, Finn has teased a potential third film in the series. He said earlier this week: “I do think that there are so many exciting places that Smile could go. For me, it’s still always about wanting to do something thematically rich that’s centred on character stories.
“I love where this film goes, and right now I’m excited for audiences to see Smile 2. Hopefully, if they embrace it, I think that there could be a really interesting future for Smile.”