‘Smile 2’ ending explained: Did Skye Riley escape the curse?

Parker Finn’s American psychological supernatural horror movie Smile 2 delivers a haunting, mind-bending conclusion that leaves the audience questioning reality and expands the curse we were introduced to in the first film. Here’s a detailed breakdown of the film’s chilling finale and what it means for the Smile franchise. Also learn all about Smile 2 cast, trailer, release date, IMDb rating, Rotten Tomatoes rating, movie review, where to watch and more.

The horror thriller is the sequel to Smile (2022). As our primary protagonist pop star Skye Riley battles an increasingly insidious supernatural force, the line between hallucination and reality becomes so blurred that even her final moments remain ambiguous.

Spoilers ahead!

What happens at the end of Smile 2? A breakdown of Skye Riley’s nightmare

Before diving into the ending, first let’s learn, in brief, what happens in the movie’s plot. Smile 2 follows Skye Riley (Naomi Scott, best known for playing Disney princess Jasmine in 2019’s live-action Aladdin movie), a pop star preparing for a major comeback tour, whose life descends into chaos after she witnesses the suicide of Lewis, a drug dealer cursed by the Smile Entity. Skye begins to experience terrifying hallucinations ᅳ visions of smiling people, unsettling voices and encounters with her dead boyfriend, Paul. Struggling to hold her life together, she humiliates herself at a charity event by reacting hysterically to one such vision, not surprisingly triggering public and personal fallout.

Haunted by guilt over Paul’s death, Skye meets a nurse called Morris, who suggests that restarting her heart might break the curse. But the plan is derailed as the Smile Entity continues its psychological torment, forcing her to confront a painful memory: the car accident that killed Paul wasn’t an accident but an intentional act fuelled by her rage. As Skye becomes increasingly trapped in the entity’s manipulations, it murders her manager and her mother, leaving her alone and desperate. However, it’s revealed at the end of this psychological thriller and horror movie that much of what Skye experiences may all along have been hallucinations planted by the Entity, including interactions with Morris and her friend Gemma.

Smile 2 ending explained

In the final sequence, Skye appears to be on her first night of the world tour, but nothing about the moment feels celebratory in nature. Instead, the film reveals that the monstrous Smile Entity not only invaded Skye’s psyche but took full control of her body.

The concert scene, although it looks real, feels like some culmination of the manipulation the entity does. Surrounded by thousands of screaming fans, the creature makes Skye stab her own eye out with her microphone, gargantuanly passing the curse onto the whole audience. As her lifeless body sprawls on the stage, the curse transfers onto onlookers, setting a chain reaction. Among the horrified crowd are Skye’s mother, Elizabeth, and close acquaintances Darius and Joshua — they all might just be figments of her imagination, though.

The open-ended finale raises a number of questions: Was any of it real? If it was, the curse could now spread exponentially, potentially threatening the whole world.

How much of Skye’s experience was a hallucination?

Throughout Smile 2, the Smile Entity manipulates Skye’s perception, muddling what is real and what is just one of her hallucinations. Some of the most sinister twists of the movie include key events such as the deaths of her manager and mother are part of the entity’s tricks.

But the most misleading of all is the seeming appearance of Gemma, Skye’s close friend. There is, at one point in the film, a syntactic plot point in which Gemma seems to help Skye escape, only to later reveal that Skye receives a phone call from the “real” Gemma, which means the person driving with her is nothing but a manifestation of the entity. It really nails down how complete the entity’s control over Skye is: even supposed allies are actually unreliable figments.

The scheme to break the curse by stopping Skye’s heartbeat temporarily is revealed to be another cruel illusion. It lets her think she has a way out of this nightmare and then shatters such hopes by dragging her right back into one. Almost every decision Skye made was orchestrated in such a way that the entity of the curse terrifyingly grasped her mind and actions.

What does Skye’s death mean for the so-called smile curse?

Skye’s death on stage serves as both a personal tragedy and a critical moment for the entity. In the original Smile, the curse spread through trauma witnessed by others. By forcing Skye to kill herself in front of a live audience, the entity ensures that the curse can now spread to hundreds ᅳ or perhaps thousands ᅳ of fans.

The implications are chilling. With so many witnesses, the curse could now replicate itself among the crowd, turning each audience member into a potential new target. This expands the franchise’s scope dramatically, suggesting that Smile 3 could depict an even larger epidemic of supernatural terror.

What really happened in Skye’s past?

A major emotional thread in Smile 2 is Skye’s unresolved guilt over her boyfriend Paul’s death. It comes out through the course of the film that their fatal car accident was not an accident but, in fact, the result of a heated argument during which Skye had purposely reached over and steered into oncoming traffic, killing Paul. The self-sabotaging nature of this act feeds Skye’s overwhelming sense of guilt and primes her to be the perfect target for the Smile Entity, which feeds on unresolved trauma and self-hatred.

It plays on Skye’s guilt and sends her into an emotional breakdown to replay the plane crash and question her sanity. That’s also similar to the psychological torment in the original Smile, whereby the entity manipulated victims’ darkest fears and insecurities to push them toward self-destruction.

What makes Smile 2’s ending so terrifying?

The film’s ambiguous ending, which provides one of the finest movie plot twists this year, leaves viewers with a sense of dread. Is the entire final act ᅳ including Skye’s death ᅳ just another hallucination? The presence of her supposedly dead mother in the concert crowd raises doubts. The Smile Entity’s ability to warp reality makes it impossible to know whether the concert happened or was a mental projection designed to trap Skye in a final illusion.

Even if the events are real, the curse’s scale has increased dramatically. With so many potential new victims, Smile 2 suggests that the entity could now move from individual hauntings to a global epidemic of psychological horror.

Smile 2 brief movie review

Here is our brief Smile 2 movie review: If you thought forced smiles were creepy before, Smile 2 cranks it up to “nope” levels. Naomi Scott steps in as Skye Riley, a pop star loses her mind thanks to the grinning curse that just won’t quit. The movie drips with tension, delivering jump scares that actually land (yeah, those rare ones). It toys with trauma and guilt, but not in a preachy way.

The second act sags somewhat, but the ending hits with sufficient force to more than make up for it. Just when you think you’ve figured it out, the film pulls the rug out from under you and leaves you second-guessing each and every smile you see. Smile 2 knows exactly what it’s doing: crawling into your head and making you flinch from the inside. It is the best kind of horror movie. Make it a must-watch this Halloween film marathon.

Will there be a Smile 3?

The ending of Smile 2 perfectly sets up a third instalment. With the curse now possibly spreading to thousands of people, the entity may no longer be bound by the constraints of targeting individuals. This could also mean Smile 3 is about mass hysteria or even psychic plague. Perhaps the entity manifests in several victims at once, wreaking chaos on a bigger scale.

Parker Finn’s sequel also raises thematic questions about fame, trauma, and public personas. Skye’s inner demonsᅳcloaked by her pop-star persona ᅳ parallel the very thematic function of the movie: the secret burden of trauma and how it perturbs mental health. Smile 2 posits that those who look to have everything going right in their life could well be holding immense unresolved hurt that only makes them more susceptible to the entity’s invective.

Smile 2 trailer

Watch the Smile 2 trailer here:

Smile 2 release date

Smile 2 release date was 18 October.

What is Smile 2’s IMDb rating?

Smile 2’s current IMDb rating is 7.2.

What is Smile 2 Rotten Tomatoes rating?

Smile 2 Rotten Tomatoes rating is currently at 84 per cent.

Who is in the Smile 2 cast?

Apart from Naomi Scott, Smile 2 also features Rosemarie DeWitt, Lukas Gage, Miles Gutierrez-Riley, Peter Jacobson, Raúl Castillo, Dylan Gelula, Ray Nicholson, Kyle Gallner and more in the cast. While most are little known, Ray is legendary actor Jack Nicholson’s son and Gage has appeared in HBO’s dark comedy series The White Lotus (2021–).

Smile 2: Where to watch?

So if you wish to see Smile 2, where to watch it? You can currently watch the movie in theatres. At some point in time, it will make its streaming debut.

(Hero and featured image: Courtesy of IMDb)