Editor's Note: This article contains spoilers for Smile 2

Summary

Controlled gore in Smile 2 hits better with audience expectations.
Smile 2 finds new ways to shock the audience while keeping some of its original content.
Ramping up the gore in Smile 2 adds depth to the villain character.

2024 has seen a banner crop of horror movies. What used to be something that was only released around Halloween has become a year-round affair. Two of the most popular horror movies of the year, Smile 2 and Terrifier 3, have seen some real success at the box office, thanks in no small part to their release just in time for the spooky season. Halloween being right around the corner helped, but it appears that both films are also quite popular because they are legitimately good horror movies in their own right. And interestingly enough, each movie offers moviegoers something a little different.

While Smile 2 is more of a "thinker" type horror movie with some deep symbolism and quite a bit of character development, Terrifier 3 is more of a traditional slasher movie. The flick gets off to killing right away and never really stops, getting so gruesome that there were reports that people left the theater because they simply couldn't take the gore anymore. Both films are seeing plenty of success with their approaches. There's no "right" way or "wrong" way to present a horror movie. Still, the exciting thing is that Smile 2 is following in the footsteps of Terrifier 3 a bit but doing things just differently enough that when it offers up gore, it hits differently.

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By Rachael Phillips

Controlled Gore In Smile 2 Hits Better

One of the tried and true aspects of the Smile franchise is that it relies quite a bit more on the jump scare. It relies on the smile demon popping out of nowhere and when the audience and the main characters least expect it. While there's definite violence in the way that it's passed around, in the way it jumps from one victim to another, the deaths in the first movie were not particularly gory. There was blood for sure; it's not afraid of showing death, but it was controlled blood. It was someone cutting their own throat, not... For instance, bashing their face in with a weight from a weight bench. Certainly, someone bashing their face so many times that parts of that face were sliding off their skull was not something the first Smile movie felt like it had to do.

Smile 2
Directed By	Parker Finn
Written By	Parker Finn
Starring	Naomi Scott, Rosemarie DeWitt, Dylan Gelula, Lukas Gage, Kyle Gallner, Peter Jacobson, Miles Gutierrez-Riley
Runtime	2 Hours, 7 Minutes
Release Date	October 18, 2024

Terrifier 3, on the other hand, had a tradition to uphold. The first two movies were quite gory. There were plenty of body parts flying hither and yon. Art the Clown was someone or something people simply expected to see ripping into his victims. That doesn't make the movie inferior to the Smile franchise. The franchises have a lot of the same members of their fanbase. They want to be grossed out. They want to be scared. And they like that while Terrifier 3 is closer to a more traditional slasher film, there's just enough difference (thanks largely to the extreme gore) to make it stand out from the crowd.

Smile 2 Finds New Ways To Shock Audience

Naomi Scott confronted by dancers in Smile 2

One reason the original Smile went more for the jump scare and the psychological horror of a ghost-like demon that could pop up as anyone is that it was looking for a mainstream audience, as opposed to Terrifier 3, which is a smaller operation with a niche group of fans who, after the first two, are expecting a certain level of gore and grossness. In order to get a larger audience, the original movie in this now franchise needed to step away from totally grossing people out at every turn.

However, there are several reasons why it made sense to ramp up the gore for Smile 2. The first reason is that when dealing with a movie that has many of the same aspects of the first, it is a real challenge to offer something different. People went into Smile 2 expecting things. And because of that, the jump scares don't pay off as well. People start to expect that when things are going well that the character being nice to Skyler is in fact going to be the demon. So the movie had to find new ways to surprise.

There is also an argument to be made that if a sequel wants to make sure it gets people into the theaters, it needs to ramp things up. And Smile 2 definitely ramped up the volume when it came to blood and gore. But it wasn't just to get people in the seats.

The ramping up of the gore, especially when faces start sliding off of skulls, surprises the audience. It makes them wince when they weren't expecting to wince. And it also adds a little more at stake to the story. It shows that the demon is a vicious and terrifying thing. It, in effect, adds another layer to a villain that was already reprehensible.

It, in effect, adds another layer to a villain that was already reprehensible.

While there are some differing reports as to just how bad the gore in Terrifier 3 really is, there's no doubt that the amount of gore that's offered up in Smile 2 stands out precisely because it's at a level that mainstream films that are looking for bigger audiences tends not to do. But it absolutely works for Parker Finn's latest.

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