When Cahiers du Cinéma included M. Night Shyamalan's Trap in its editors' Top 10 Films of 2024, I was both surprised and baffled. While Trap showed undeniable potential, its execution left much to be desired, making it one of the year's more notable missed opportunities. Its inclusion on such a prestigious list makes me wonder if the editors were swayed by the film's promising first half alone.
As someone deeply invested in narrative craft, I've often reflected on my complex relationship with Shyamalan's work. Despite being badly let down each time, I still religiously watched all his productions. His undeniable talent for conceptual innovation keeps me coming back, yet his films often follow a frustrating pattern: they pivot around a brilliant central idea, but once that concept is revealed, the surrounding narrative structure tends to falter. In other words, Shyamalan is an ace in conceptualization but essentially ineffectual at storytelling and adding depth to his works. Trap exemplifies this perfectly.
The film's opening premise is masterful—a high-stakes game of cat and mouse between a killer and his prey, all set against the backdrop of a large-scale pop concert. This game of wits and guts in a confined setting creates a tense, intricate web of dramatic suspense. However, Shyamalan's incompetence at execution comes to light as soon as the film's second half abandons this rich setup entirely and devolves into a more conventional killer-chase narrative. What begins as a promising and innovative genre piece ultimately settles into an incongruous low-grade thriller, missing the opportunity to break new ground. Once again, Shyamalan took me for a ride.
Thankfully, the regrets left behind by Trap were quickly erased by Parker Finn's Smile 2. By contrast, Smile 2 demonstrates precisely what Trap could have achieved with its concert venue premise. In fact, I'm convinced that if the editors at Cahiers du Cinéma had seen Smile 2, they might have reconsidered their inclusion of Trap on their Top 10 list.
Building on the foundation laid by the original Smile (2022), Finn skillfully expanded the unsettling world of the "smile curse." At its core, the curse ruthlessly preys on psychological trauma, leaving victims with a grim choice: commit a murder in front of witnesses to transfer the curse or succumb to possession. Those who fail to pass it on meet horrific ends; they'll be driven to commit gruesome acts of self-destruction that trap any witnesses in the same vicious cycle.
In Smile 2, The Entity sets its sights on a particularly ambitious target: rising pop sensation Skye Riley (Naomi Scott), who is about to start a world tour. While Trap features a similar character, Lady Raven (played by the director's daughter, Saleka Shyamalan), serves as little more than a plot device. Whether this was Shyamalan's deliberate restraint to avoid nepotism or a missed opportunity for richer character development stemming from his ineptitude in designing dramatic conflicts is debatable.
With a pop superstar at its center, Smile 2 cleverly subverts our surface-level understanding of the entertainment industry to create something deeply unnerving. Scott's performance evokes shades of Lady Gaga, particularly her carefully constructed public persona. The film leverages the media and online platforms' obsession with crafting an idealized, radiant version of the lives of celebrities—a narrative that elevates stars to superhuman status until scandals inevitably shatter the illusion. After their dishonorable acts are exposed, these celebrities scurry to adopt the "I'm only human" mantra. As more of them cave in to the weight of scandal, the public opinion pendulum swings, and the same figures are often recast as duplicitous self-deprecators.
Interestingly, what sets Smile 2 apart is how it delves into the prejudiced notions of celebrity duality, while at the same time showcasing the darkness of Skye's hidden life in a far more sinister and intimidating fashion that consumes not only her but the viewers. From the outset, the film masterfully constructs a layered portrait of her fractured existence, contrasting her polished public image with the chaos of her private life, as well as her polarized self-awareness. Once the smile curse takes hold, Skye's grip on reality crumbles, and the boundaries between truth and delusion blur. Through her psychological descent, we witness the surfacing of long-buried darkness, fears and rage. Yet this raises a provocative question: does this transformation reflect Skye's authentic self?
To answer this question, we must explore the mechanics of the smile curse itself. The Entity targets and amplifies psychological trauma, completely devouring its victims' consciousness until only devastation remains. Like real-world trauma, it strips away one's agency, identity and will to live. Skye's possession doesn't reveal her true self—it represents a complete psychological breakdown that unveils the deranged version of her.
Ironically, the film's haunting conclusion turns us, the viewers, into witnesses of Skye's obliteration by The Entity or rather, by the psycho bug. Her identity as a shining superstar is erased, leaving only pathology behind. This mirrors the real-world phenomenon of the "cancellation" of celebrities embroiled in scandals, where a single incident or behavior wipes away the complexity of their identity upon entering the eyes of the public and media. For generations of celebrities (both dead and alive), the resulting scrutiny and public discussions often trigger a kind of social death in them (as well as ordinary people), leaving only the distorted remains of a once-celebrated persona.
Smile 2 is indisputably a triumph of modern horror. Besides delivering effective jump scares and visceral body horror, its real strength lies in its glaring and unflinching exploration and depiction of psychological trauma. By transforming the concert venue and celebrity setting from mere backdrops into integral storytelling elements, the film avoids using horror merely as a publicity stunt and fully elevates it to profound new heights.
Finn's mastery of horror contrasts sharply with Shyamalan's focus on narrative spectacle. Smile 2 succeeds by using defamiliarization—a foundational horror technique that Shyamalan, despite his ingenuity, often struggles to grasp.
Smile 2 can serve as a case study for Shyamalan to learn how to fully realize a brilliant concept without losing sight of the story's emotional core. It's a film that doesn't just want to surprise you—but also haunt you. And in doing so, it leaves us asking a question that's just as terrifying as the smile curse itself: in the face of our darkest traumas, how much of ourselves are we willing to lose?
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