“Smile 2” is a first-rate horror movie. It has a nice quantity of gore coupled with eerie and scary scenarios that lovers of this genre will appreciate. Anchored by a tour-de-force performance by Naomi Scott, the film blurs the line between reality and fantasy so that everything often seems off kilter in the best way.

The picture begins 6 days after the end of the last installment. A man takes a drug. The kidnapper eviscerates his victim. Shots are exchanged.

Unfortunately for the kidnapper, he has managed to kill both men. He needed one of them alive to pass along the Smile demon. Meanwhile, more members of the gang show up and try to break into the house. The kidnapper manages to escape, only, in a scene that made me jump, to be struck by a vehicle and apparently dragged to his death.

Next we see pop mega-star Skye Riley (Naomi Scott) appear on a talk show with Drew Barrymore (herself). Skye had a drug habit. She was in a car with her actor boyfriend when they crashed and he was killed. Now Skye is launching a comeback tour and needs to look sober and repentant. She succeeds in doing this.

At a dance practice for a sequence in the program for the tour, Skye and the other dancers are doing fine. Suddenly a back pain stops Skye in her tracks. In a bathroom she accidentally drops her secret stash of Vicodin down the sink when startled.

As she is dropped off at her home and told to get some sleep, she secretly goes to visit Lewis (Lukas Gage) to get some more Vicodin. When she arrives, Lewis acts freaked out. He says that he is seeing things.

He wanders back into another room to get Skye’s drugs. When he returns, he has the telltale rictus smile of those infected by the demon. He takes a weight for a barbell and proceeds to bash himself in the face over and over until it is worn down to a pulp. He dies, Skye vomits and then flees.

Over a period of time, Skye begins seeing battered Lewis behind her when she looks in the mirror. At an autograph/photo session, two people with the Smile grin show up. One attempts to assault her. One of them shows up later at her apartment. Or does he?

Skye has been estranged from her best friend Gemma (Dylan Gelula) for some time. Now she reaches out. Gemma arrives and Skye tells her the truth about Lewis. Gemma is non-committal about going on tour.

An unknown texter asks Skye if she was at Lewis’s apartment the day he died. She finally agrees to meet him. Morris (Peter Jacobson) is a nurse. His brother was killed by the Smile demon.

He tells Skye that he needs to induce a death-like state in her to keep the demon from jumping to anyone else. He wants to freeze her and then revive her. Skye is recognized by fans and leaves without saying yes.

Can Skye stop the Smile demon before it drives her mad?

I am not a fan of jump scares. I find the set-up for them to be usually very predictable. The fact that I was shocked by the opening jump scare of the car hitting the kidnapper surprised me. This film so successfully blurs reality and the madness of the Smile demon world that there were several jump scares that were quite frightening and eerie at the same time. There is something about a group of people all smiling grotesquely that seems more like a nightmare than anything based in reality.

There are at least two moments in the script where the story jumped from what appeared to be reality to something else. One could argue that this is a negative. I, on the other hand, thought it an effective portrayal of what it would be like to not know what is going on in your demon-possessed head.

One theme which kept recurring is not having anyone to confide in when things go south. This is compounded in Skye’s case since she has created trust issues because of her past drug use. So any comments about the Smile demon are bound to be taken as a drug-induced fantasy or as a sign of mental illness, perhaps the result of drug use. The fact that no one believes her except for Morris means that she descends into her mental chaos by herself.

I normally don’t like the stock set-up of a person who truly sees danger and is not believed. It just gets tiresome and frustrating to see person after person devaluing the victim’s claim. I felt there was too much of that in the first “Smile” movie. But in this second installment, the focus is in a broader context with more action to offset my dislike of this technique when it occurred.

The film does a good job of showcasing the glitz and the glamour of the pop-star world. Skye has an entourage, who sometimes seem to be going against her best interests. Skye personifies the fan desire to both create an icon and then forgive their excesses when the star seems repentant enough.

The visual effects are superb. Often they seem over-the-top in terms of excessive goriness. Those who love their viscera will not be disappointed. Even more impressive though are the choreographed scenes with the Smile entities who confront Skye. There is one sequence with about 15 actors who are so diabolically interconnected that it is a wonder to behold.

I have to give a shout-out to the composer of the score, Cristobal Tapia de Veer. Not only are there eerie visuals, but the music takes eerie scores up a notch. It is often understated but the weird union of noises and music is just creepy.

Every other actor is in a supporting role to Naomi Scott as Skye Riley. Her singing chops are great. She exudes the charisma and simultaneous mystery of a pop star effortlessly. Her fear seems genuine and her mental decline as the Smile curse fulfills itself is expertly portrayed.

The ending is perfect for “Smile 2”. I won’t give away spoilers, but it sets the stage for an even more ambitious “Smile 3”.

This film is too gory for children and tweens. But for those who love horror this is a must-see.

Four and a half out of five stars

About to embark on a new world tour, global pop sensation Skye Riley (Naomi Scott) begins experiencing increasingly terrifying and inexplicable events. Overwhelmed by the escalating horrors and the pressures of fame, Skye is forced to face her dark past to regain control of her life before it spirals out of control.

CAST: Naomi Scott, Rosemarie DeWitt, Lukas Gage, Miles Gutierrez-Riley, Peter Jacobson, Ray Nicholson, Dylan Gelula, Raúl Castillo and Kyle Gallner

WRITTEN & DIRECTED BY: Parker Finn