Grin and Bear it - SMILE 2 Trauma-horror sequel sees the curse latch onto a pop superstar...

Parker Finn's debut horror feature Smile was originally destined for a streaming release. No one - not even the writer/director himself - expected that a late change to theatrical would create a hit horror sensation that made almost 13 times its budget at the box office. Given those figures, the swift greenlighting of a sequel came as less of a shock. But Finn didn't want to make a second movie just for the sake of it.

- By Lauren Miles

Parker Finn's debut horror feature Smile was originally destined for a streaming release. No one - not even the writer/director himself - expected that a late change to theatrical would create a hit horror sensation that made almost 13 times its budget at the box office. Given those figures, the swift greenlighting of a sequel came as less of a shock. But Finn didn't want to make a second movie just for the sake of it.

‘I knew that if I was going to even think about approaching a sequel, I needed to find a way that I could fall back in love with a new main character and explore something interesting in the universe of Smile that felt thematically rich, and emotional and immediate again,’ Finn explains, elaborating that he likes his stories to be character-driven.