Director Parker Finn beat the odds with the first “Smile” film. Shot for $17 million, the 2022 horror turned into a box office behemoth grossing over $200 million worldwide. So while shooting “Smile 2,” Finn took the same approach, pushing his budget and schedule to the limits in a process he described as fitting “a […]

The box office is ear-to-ear for “Smile 2,” with Paramount’s horror entry landing $9.4 million from 3,619 domestic locations across Friday and preview screenings. That’s above the $8.2 million opening day that the first “Smile” earned in 2022 — a successful kick-off for this sequel, which carries a $28 million production budget. With Halloween season […]

"Smile 2" is a flash-cut horror parable, but the story it’s telling is that pop fame makes you crazy. Though the movie is hardly subtle, Parker Finn has become a clever enough filmmaker to make reality feel like a hallucination and hallucinations feel like reality.