Smile 2 has one genuinely good idea, which is that the everyday life of a messed-up pop megastar is indistinguishable from the shrieking terrors of a supernatural horror movie. Whenever director Parker Finn runs with that thought, the film has a nice, disorienting punch. The victims of horror movies usually suffer in private, stalked through dark empty houses or remote forests or abandoned corridors. Smile 2’s superstar protagonist, however, is constantly surrounded by people: hangers-on, assistants, fans, and gawkers. She suffers in full view of the public, with people all around her who could presumably help. That turns out to be just as unsettling as an eerie lake or a cabin in the woods, and more metaphorically potent to boot.

The film follows a few days in the life of global pop icon Skye Riley (Naomi Scott), who is returning to performing after a period in rehab and a lengthy hiatus due to a gruesome car crash that scarred her and killed her actor boyfriend Paul (Ray Nicholson). But when her old friend and dealer Lewis (Lukas Gage) cracks a sinister smile before gleefully bashing his own head open with a 35-pound weight plate, things start to go truly haywire. Skye begins seeing Lewis’s figure lurking around her, as well as that of the long-deceased Paul. Most importantly, she starts to see the smiles — those unsettling, unnatural, wide grins from the first movie that tell us that demonic possession may be afoot.

At its best, Smile 2 keeps us guessing as to whether Skye is being haunted or simply dealing with the craziness of fandom. Is the sweaty, clingy creep who wants her to sign his T-shirt and won’t leave her alone a monster from the beyond, or just your average stalker? What about her incessantly supportive mother (Rosemarie DeWitt) or her obsequious assistant (Miles Gutierrez-Riley)? Then there’s the fact that Skye is a recovering addict. (The only reason she visits a dealer is because she’s not allowed prescription-strength pain meds but is still in agony from all her post-accident surgeries.) Could these things following her be drug-induced hallucinations? Okay, maybe “keeps us guessing” is overstating it: We know the true answer to all these questions, even if Skye doesn’t. But while the film is too much of a standard-issue horror movie to keep things ambiguous, it does make us think about how the phony smiles that surround celebrities aren’t too different from the evil smiles that surround the protagonist-victims of the Smile franchise.

Director Finn has clearly given this some thought, and he wisely doesn’t just revisit the narrative stations of the first picture. He made his feature directorial debut with that film, a surprise hit in 2022 that was an expansion of a short he’d made two years earlier. But Smile ran out of steam after establishing its nifty premise of an unseen viral demon that plastered disturbing grins on people’s faces before making them kill themselves. A world in which other people’s smiles became monstrous threats was a brilliant visual idea, one of both eerie immediacy and symbolic charge, but the movie eventually lost itself amid the predictable requirements of a genre picture.

Unfortunately, Smile 2 is similarly torn between its novel premise and the base demands of horror. It’s hard not to watch Skye’s spiraling reality and think of all the young nonfictional celebrities who’ve melted down in front of our eyes over the years: the Britneys, the Lindsays, the Amandas and Aarons and others. And yet while Scott’s appropriately freaked-out performance helps, the film never quite manages to make us care for Skye, in part because she’s a victim right from the start and things never settle down long enough for us to get any sense of her as a character. The film’s empathy exists mostly in the abstract, as Finn overdoes Skye’s fraying consciousness. Right as we should be feeling something for her increasingly helpless situation, he bludgeons us with ineffective jump scares — cheap, haphazard ones, awkwardly telegraphed and accompanied by loud booms and crashes on the soundtrack — and increasingly meaningless dream visions.

Like he did in the first film, the director has one go-to move that he relies on over and over again: to follow one particular narrative path before revealing that — psych! — it didn’t really happen. He wants it to be a rug-pulling mindfuck, but the more it occurs, the more it devalues everything we’re seeing. As Skye becomes increasingly unable to tell what’s actually happening and what’s a waking nightmare, we should feel more for her, and we should feel more with her. Instead, we lose interest, as the whole thing becomes pointless and even a little cynical and cruel. The movie ultimately scuttles its own ambitions.

1/5 stars

Jackie Chan’s latest family-oriented action caper, Panda Plan, closes with a title card stating that “no animals were harmed in the making of this motion picture” before clarifying that “all the animal characters are visual effects”.

Wholly redundant to anyone who has just suffered the indignity of sitting through this abysmal excuse for family entertainment, the formal acknowledgement that the film’s animal star is a fabrication inadvertently confirms that the only vulnerable species on screen is its decidedly creaky leading man.

As he turns 70 years old, Chan has entered a chapter of his career where his public persona overshadows any attempt at performance. So much so that in Panda Plan the actor actually plays himself, and on more than one occasion is facilitated by characters because they are fans of Jackie Chan.

Along the way, Chan entertains half-hearted attempts at humility, confessing to one adversary that he might not be quite the fighter he appears to be on screen, or including a running joke about his big nose.

But ultimately Panda Plan portrays Chan as an affable, heroic figure who repeatedly puts his life on the line to protect a helpless symbol of Chinese sovereignty.

I’m a huge fan of genre mashups, so a film like Astral Plane Drifter is right up my alley. A film that combines comedy, Kung Fu, spaghetti westerns, lo-fi Sci-Fi, and the metaphysical?

Sign me up!

Synopsis

Sometime Before Yesterday. Or After Tomorrow. Somewhere Out In The Yonder. There Was This Guy.

Astral Plane Drifter was directed by Scott Sloane and created and written by Mike Caravella. The film stars Mike Caravella, John J. Jordan, Mike Rad, Christophe Zajac-Denek, Andrew Joseph Perez, Irena Murphy, Richard Wayne, Blade Sabovcik, Jenny Leona, Gianni Caravella, Samuel Hanke and Matt Weis.

I really enjoyed Astral Plane Drifter. It’s kind of an easy watch. You just have to go with it’s flow. It has a really laid back and chill vibe. The film follows The Drifter as he tries to save his friend, and in effect, the earth itself, from an energy vampire. Over the course of the film he’ll have to find his path and content with vampires, energy vampires and snake men.

The film is an absolute blast. The Drifter is so laid back and fun to watch. Think The Dude if he had metaphysical powers. The combat scenes are completely not what you would expect at all from a film that takes Kung Fu as an influence, which just makes it all the more hilarious. The dialogue is another strong suit for the film, especially the double entendres, such as when The Drifter tells the energy vampire he can’t put his key in his hole. I died laughing from that line alone.

I really liked the lo-fi aesthetic, especially the look of the villains. They had a very retro look that worked well with the vibe of the film. I like how the hero rarely had to use his abilities to take down the villains, using his go with the flow nature to his advantage. Seeing the hero just shooting the shit and getting wasted with henchman that were sent after him was a joy to watch.

When The Drifter uses his powers, it’s absolutely hilarious. Did I mention the dude can shoot lasers out of his junk? The film wraps up the main story but leaves things wide open for a sequel, which I definitely wouldn’t mind one bit.

Final Thoughts

If you enjoy chill comedies, stoner comedies, Kung films, Spaghetti Westerns and Lo-fi Sci-Fi then Astral Plane Drifter may just be the film for you. It’s laid back but also frequently hilarious.