Legitimately The Hardest For Me To Watch

Warning: SPOILERS lie ahead for Smile 2!

As the movie dominates its opening box office weekend, Lukas Gage is reflecting on his gory Smile 2 death. The follow-up to the viral 2022 horror hit sees the pop singer Skye Riley afflicted with the Smiler Entity curse just before going on a worldwide comeback tour, forcing her to confront her past demons and try and find a way to stop it. With Naomi Scott leading the Smile 2 cast, the movie is garnering large acclaim from critics and audiences alike, while also narrowly topping its predecessor’s opening weekend at the box office.

During a recent interview with Screen Rant at New York Comic Con, Gage was asked about the nature of filming his Smile 2 death. The star began by praising the special effects team who put the sequence together, recalling that “the prosthetics on this were incredible” and required a lot of preparation to “accurately” capture his smashed face:

Yeah, the prosthetics on this were incredible. The guys who did them made a mold of my face, and they did a lot of different layering of how much impact this object was, and what this weight on my face would do to my face. Then [it’s about] accurately displaying it.

While acknowledging that the gym weight his character uses to smash his face in the scene was just plastic, Gage did assure that he and the team “were really going for it“, while also calling the final product “legitimately the hardest for me to watch“. Check out the rest of what Gage shared below:

Man, look. It was a plastic weight, but we were really going for it. We were going all out with it. And I’m very surprised about how jarring it is to watch because I was there on the day. I was the actor, and I was aware that there was a whole camera crew. But it is one of the things I’ve done that is legitimately the hardest for me to watch. It’s disturbing.

What Lewis’ Death Meant For Smile 2

Gage’s Gruesome Exit Only Scratched The Sequel’s Terrifying Surface

Gage, playing Skye’s high school classmate and drug dealer Lewis, was ultimately the catalyst for her story in Smile 2, with his brutal suicide under the possession of The Smiler resulting in the curse passing on to her. Despite coming after Joel’s death in the film’s opening moments, in which he was severed in half by a truck while fleeing a dangerous situation, Lewis’ death really only scratched the surface of the scares to come from the sequel.

Much like Caitlin Stasey’s Laura in the first movie, Lewis proves to be one of Skye’s main tormentors throughout Smile 2‘s plot, even replicating certain scares from the 2022 hit, namely appearing next to Scott’s protagonist as she tries to investigate a video he recorded that seemingly captured the entity. But, as the film progresses, Lewis’ gory death would only be the first that viewers would see, including what appears to be Rosemarie DeWitt’s Elizabeth seemingly stabbing herself in the throat and face with a shard of glass and Ray Nicholson’s Paul having a similarly brutal demise to Lewis.

This all culminates in Smile 2‘s biggest death, which is that of Skye herself in the sequel’s final moments, as she loses the battle against the Smiler Entity and comes under its possession while on stage in front of thousands of fans, Elizabeth and some of the people from her team. Both Lewis and Paul’s death even appear to have been foreshadowing of Skye’s, with the latter stabbing herself in her eye with her microphone, replicating the horrific sight of both prior characters’ deaths, albeit still not quite as gruesome as Lewis, who had part of his cheek fall off after smashing his face with the weight.

Our Take On Smile 2’s Gore

Parker Finn’s Desire For A More Savage Entity Worked

When it comes to comparing the first and second movies, it’s clear writer/director Parker Finn wasn’t just striving for a bigger sequel, but also one that proved far more shocking than its predecessor in Smile 2. This was made all the more evident by his recent comments that he wanted The Smiler to be “more brutal, more insane, more savage” than it was in the first film, in an effort to use audiences’ expectations of the rules and scares from the first movie against them.

Though an increase in gore doesn’t inherently always make for a better sequel, Finn’s more gruesome kills in Smile 2 actually proved quite effective in showcasing both practical effects and the growing potential of The Smiler’s abilities. Some theories are already indicating that nearly everything happened in Skye’s head, something I don’t quite adhere to, yet still find fascinating given just how difficult it was to discern between reality and hallucinations. If Finn looks to continue the franchise with a Smile 3, I hope he not only finds a way to live up to the sequel’s world-changing ending, but also delivers the same level of visually haunting deaths as Lewis.

Smile 2 is the sequel to the 2022 psychological horror film by director Parker Finn that centers on a therapist who witnesses a patient’s suicide, leading to a series of terrifying supernatural events. The sequel will see the return of Finn as director, with Paramount continuing distribution.

Director

Parker Finn

Release Date

October 18, 2024

Distributor(s)

Paramount Pictures

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