The best scary movie in Smile 2 is reminiscent of an iconic (and terrifying) anime film

Spoilers for “Smile 2” follow..

Necessarily, “Smile 2” is a remix of the original film from director Parker Finn. “Smile” ended with lead actress Rose (Sosie Bacon) succumbing to her curse; The smiling demon possessed and murdered her and handed himself over to Rose’s ex Joel (Kyle Gallner). After a cold beginning that clarifies Joel’s fate, “Smile 2” jumps to our second-round antihero: pop star Skye Riley (Naomi Scott).

The original “Smile” was about a therapist’s unraveling of their own mental health. By changing the protagonists, “Smile 2” takes up a new theme, but one that is as old as the films: the psychological torture of fame. It’s impossible to watch Skye without thinking of real female celebrities like Britney Spears, who were chewed up and spit out by tabloid media and impossible expectations.

Even before the smiling demon appears, Skye feels uneasy, as if she’s balancing on the top loop of a spiral. A recovering addict who narrowly survived a car accident, she was sent on a journey of redemption by her stage mother (Rosemarie DeWitt).

The camera and the performances it captures are always on for Skye, even when she leaves the stage. At an autograph signing for her fans, her smile (heh) looks more and more pained with each annoying fan she has to talk to. Even without the demon showing up, she’s really frightened when a long-haired, blotchy-skinned stalker confesses his “love” to her.

The story and scares of “Smile 2” owe a debt to the classic anime “Perfect Blue,” another horror film about a disintegrating pop star. My praise for “Perfect Blue” is outstanding, but I promise it’s not exaggerated. It’s the best animated horror film of all time and, quite frankly, one of cinema’s most stunning directorial debuts. None of Satoshi director Kon’s later films, great as they are, have impressed me that much.

“Perfect Blue” lead actress Mima, like Skye, has to deal with a stalker and reality collapses around her. The scene where Skye comes closest to her appears extremely shaded by the colors of “Perfect Blue.”

Described by Roger Corman as if Alfred Hitchcock had made a film for Disney, “Perfect Blue” opens with Mima as a Japanese pop idol in the three-girl band CHAM! The group’s hit “Angel of Love” is just as catchy as Skye’s “New Brain”.

Mima is naive (much more naive than Skye); Rather than falling into familiar paths, she is a wide-eyed newbie who listens to her managers and superiors for fear of disappointing them. Although she is comfortable in pop music, she pursues more adult endeavors, such as acting in a crime TV series and nude modeling.

Her biggest fan, “Me-Mania” (Masaaki Ōkura), doesn’t realize this and decides to kill her to save the “real” Mima, his idolized Madonna. It can be cheap to call a film “prescient,” but “Perfect Blue” deserves it. It horrifyingly shows how the internet transformed fandom from long-distance admiration to compulsive parasocial relationships. When we first meet Me-Mania, he sees Mima performing with CHAM! on stage. He reaches out and takes in the sight of her like a figure resting on his hand, because even if his hand isn’t there, that’s the only way he can see Mima.

Skye’s stalker isn’t that relentless, but the demon makes him seem that way. As in the first film, the Smile Monster can distort the perceptions of its victims, causing them to see elaborate hallucinations. One of Skye’s earlier and scariest moments is when she is in her apartment. She notices a trail of discarded clothing stretching piece by piece through the dark hallway of her bedroom. Then her naked stalker steps (barely) smiling into the light. He charges at Skye, who is running, and when she turns around, he is gone.

One of the films other Major set pieces happen in Skye’s apartment when the smile demon manifests as a crowd. The crowd moves in sync like a many-limbed animal, grabs Skye and begins to tear Skye apart. The stalker, invisible but recognizable by the red marks on his skin, stretches his arm into her neck.

In the end, Skye is the one who kills her fans. The film ends with her on stage as the demon takes control and hits Skye in the face with her microphone, killing her and spreading its curse to a stadium full of people. The first “Smile” was a particularly brutal entry in the “it’s actually about trauma” horror canon; His end suggested that our wounds never fully heal and fighting depression or mental illness is a losing battle. “Smile 2” continues this theme – the demon boasts “I’m in control” as Skye tries to defeat him.

This leads to the film’s final twist, that almost the entire third act was just another hallucination. “Smile 2” resorts to this trick too often and this twist goes too far, leaving the film unable to stick the landing after a mostly steady flight. You wonder what really happened, not because you are unsettled, but because you are confused. “It’s all just a dream” is often the craziest ending a storyteller can use.

“Perfect Blue” uses some similar tricks. Some scenes are real, but turn out to be scenes-within-scenes from Mima’s star vehicle “Double Bind”. About halfway through, the film jumps (repeatedly) from a scene to Mima waking up in her room again. But underneath the distortion of reality, everything fits together in “Perfect Blue.” Once you know what’s going on, it’s easy to follow along when you rewatch. While the two films share similar themes and set pieces, “Smile 2” struggles to surprise and satisfy audiences in a way that Kon’s film never manages.

“Smile 2” is in the cinema.