Rebecca English

SPOILERS I was shocked when I found out this movie was written and directed by a WOMAN. It started off strong in a skin crawling, eerie, vintage-modern setting. The set up was amazing, and gave me faith the movie was gonna play out in an Aronofsky fashion, but I was HELLA disappointed. Elisabeth, an aging super star, overheard her producer saying she was old and getting ready to be replaced by a younger model. While having some work done, she is evaluated for an experimental secret treatment called The Substance. I think the movie is supposed to be a metaphor for the internal battle and hatred women are “supposed” to feel for themselves in their older years and the lengths they will go to preserve their youth and the consequences that come with that. By the ridiculous end of the film, Elisabeth just wants to return to how her old self was before the substance. Instead, all that’s left of her is literally a puddle that gets mopped up and totally forgotten. I get the message that was supposed to come of this movie, but somewhere between the beginning and the grueling end, the plot was completely lost. Throw in every single man being portrayed as a misogynistic chauvinistic pig and you got yourself a “feminist” film. The amount of booty shots alone were absurd and definitely had me thinking this movie was made by a man. 2 hours and 20 mins of my life I’ll never get back.

Terrible movie. Don’t even waste your time watching this. 2 hrs of my life I’ll never get back. Pointless exposition, slow build up, unrewarding, unlikeable main character, and the most annoying thing is the main character who’s a mechanic is always in PRISTINE WHITE SHIRTS, not a grease stain in sight, with smudges of dirt randomly placed on her face at all times. Typical awful misogynistic cliches of working tradeswomen with a bitchy boss bitch attitude. Can’t believe this was directed by a woman. If I could give this 0/5 I would. If you wanna watch something that pisses you off, this is the movie for you.

SPOILERS Honestly one of the best sequels I’ve seen in a long time. I noticed a lot of people who left one star reviews said there were plot holes or they didn’t understand how the main character caught the demon/parasite, but that literally played out right on screen. Rose set herself on fire in the end of the first Smile in front of Joel (the cop), so he got the demon. In the beginning of the second Smile, Joel is trying to get rid of the demon by killing someone in front of a witness so the demon will transfer to the witness. So he went to a drug dealers trap house to kill a drug dealer in front of his cronie, but ends up accidentally killing them both. There was a kid at the trap house to buy drugs and he saw Joel kill the drug dealers, so the entity went into the kid instead. The kid turns out to be Lewis (Skye’s drug dealer), who then killed himself in front of Skye. Jumping ahead, Skye is hallucinating and sees her backup dancers all smiling and creeping towards her, so she tries to get away and they come after her and hold her down and you see an arm reaching all the way downs Skye’s throat. We saw in the first Smile, the demon unclothes itself from its human form and climbs inside Rose’s throat. That being said, we can assume the demon enters its hosts by climbing down their throats. So everything that happened after that, Skye was hallucinating. So that means when Skye went from the freezer to the stage, the demon had control of her mind and she didn’t even realize it. I think that’s another thing people were confused about. It was said that the demon could control your mind in ways you wouldn’t think possible, so that’s why she couldn’t tell reality from hallucinations because the demon was already inside her. But overall, if you have some critical thinking skills and have watched the first one, this is one of the best sequels I’ve seen in a few years.

Top tier trashy reality TV. Like I wanted to stop watching, but I literally couldn’t. And i usually don’t watch much reality TV, but this is definitely worth the watch.

Honestly, this is a great movie. Very of the time. I feel it’s one of the very rare occasions where the sequel is just as good, if not better, than the first movie. I just rewatched it again and it gets better every time.

Literally the best movie I’ve seen in 2024. I didn’t hear about this movie or know a thing about it, which is crazy bc it was so good. Easy to follow, great plot, amazing performance by Melissa Mcarthy and Kristen Bell. Definitely worth the watch. Definitely worth more than the 22% Rotten Tomatoes gave it.

Don’t waste your time on this movie. No plot whatsoever. The trippy elements were cool though.