Smile 2 and original Smile connection

In 2022, Paramount Pictures released one of the creepier psychological horror films of the past few years when Smile debuted. It became a box office smash, raking in over $217 million worldwide against a $17 million budget. Its unique premise that anyone could be the villain in the film — and the main character not knowing if she can truly believe what she’s seeing — made it a fun watch for any horror fan. It marked the feature film debut for director Parker Finn and Paramount quickly ordered a sequel.

Smile 2 is set to release on October 18, 2024. October is the perfect time for horror movies, and there’s a slew of them set to come out. Smile 2 has been circled on many fans’ calendars since the trailer was released in July, so if you haven’t seen the original, it is definitely worth your watch — just make sure to sleep with the lights on.

For those that have seen it, you may be wondering how the first one connects to the second one. As you prepare for Smile 2, let’s revisit the original Smile and see how the two are related. Considering how the first one ended, there are endless ways for this to happen.

What happens in the original film Smile

The horror film will have you thinking creepy

Smile tells the story of Rose (Sosie Bacon), a therapist at a psychiatric ward, who watches a patient of hers slit their throat after complaining that she’s seeing people smile at her. Believing an invisible entity is taunting her about her death after she witnessed the death of her professor, the next day, Rose sees a patient smiling at her and telling her she is going to die. Unnerved, her boss tells her to take a week off.

Rose sees her former therapist, who believes this nervousness is caused by the trauma of witnessing her mother die of a drug overdose when she was young. She visits her patient’s professor’s widow to learn that he also saw someone commit suicide before his death. She asks her former boyfriend Joel (Kyle Gallner) to look into these deaths, and he surmises that there have been 19 deaths in 20 cases where someone witnessed the death of someone else and then died within seven days.

Rose and Joel go and meet the one person who didn’t die, a man who is a convicted murderer. He tells them that the only way to have the entity leave you alone is to murder someone in front of someone else, passing on the trauma to the witness. Rose, against the idea, is taunted by the entity in the form of her former therapist and decides that she should kill someone. She goes through with killing the patient that taunted her in the beginning of the film in front of her boss, but it turned out to be a hallucination.

Rose heads to her childhood home, which is abandoned. The entity reveals itself in its true form in this horrific looking monster with jaws and an underlying smile. The sight of it forces Rose into a trance, and the entity jumps into Rose’s body through her mouth. Joel tracks Rose’s phone and gets to her just in time to see her smile at him and light herself on fire, killing herself and passing on the curse to him.

How will Smile 2 connect to the first film

The trailer for the sequel is packed with events

Paramount Pictures

The premise for the sequel revolves around Skye Riley (Naomi Scott), an up-and-coming pop star who is taunted by the entity. She is about to go on a world tour but keeps seeing people smile at her. She needs to confront her past in order to figure out why this is all happening to her. As we see in the trailer, she witnesses a suicide which sets everything in motion.

The sequel stars:

• Naomi Scott
• Kyle Gallner
• Rosemarie DeWitt
• Lukas Gage
• Peter Jacobson
• Miles Gutierrez-Riley
• Raul Castillo
• Dylan Gelula
• Ray Nicholson

Finn was interviewed by The Hollywood Reporter shortly after the original debuted and was asked about the possibility of a sequel. At the time, he said:

“…if there’s more to be done with
Smile
, I would never want to just repeat myself or retread the same ground. I’d want to make sure that there’s a new, exciting, fresh way into it that the audience isn’t anticipating. I also want to find some new ways to scare them and unnerve them. But as far as how it may connect to the first one, if we were to do it, I’d want that to be surprising as well.”

It makes sense to have Joel in this one as well, because he’s the person who’s currently being stalked by the entity in the Smile universe. If we are to guess though, his time in the film is likely limited, as the trailer shows the entity is already stalking other people. Behind the entity and Joel’s presence, it isn’t known how much more crossover the two films will have besides the title. You can imagine there will be some terrifying deaths and some gruesome scenes, just like in the original. Fans must be prepared to go along for a psychological ride with Skye.

Which is fine, considering the horror nature of the film. Not every Paranormal Activity or Final Destination film was connected, except for the overlying arch of evil. Of course, when a horror sequel does connect to an original film in a clever way that leaves fans shocked, it’s a treat for the audience. We’ll see just how much Smile 2 takes from the original film when it premieres in a few weeks.