Stranded on stage in entrance of hundreds of members of her adoring public, Skye is trapped and doomed — even her personal mom innocuously mouths to her to smile, insisting she cowl up all this ache and guilt and torment that she’s been experiencing during the last week. The place Rose noticed the Monstrosity (the bodily manifestation of the entity, all bloody, muscular gristle surrounding a sequence of mouths) emerge from the supply of her trauma, her late mom, Skye as soon as once more sees a model of herself, solely it is a mirror picture of herself, all glammed up for her first massive track. This DemonSkye smiles as she exposes one other a part of Skye that she was actually attempting to maintain hidden: the scar from one in every of her wounds that travels vertically down her abdomen. DemonSkye opens up this scar, permitting the Monstrosity to crawl out and pressure Skye’s mouth open to let it in. In actuality, the amassed crowd stares horrified as Skye seems to have a seizure on stage, however earlier than anybody can alert authorities, Skye sits again up, apparently tremendous. She stands, a giant, nasty smile plastered over her face.

One under-discussed side of artists is the best way that they impart themselves via their work. Most often, a baring of their soul is absolutely intentional: the actor seeks to speak their deepest feelings, the singer tasks their ideas and emotions via music, and so on. Nonetheless, there additionally exists the truth that artists should promote themselves with the intention to acquire and hold an viewers, to stay profitable in a fickle trade. Thus, actors may be typecast, celebrities solely stay attention-grabbing so long as they’re inflicting drama behind the scenes, and so forth. When an artist is caught inside their very own public picture, they’ll need to lash out at it: to shock, to upset, to stain, and even typically, to damage. The ultimate second of “Smile 2” sees Skye Riley enact the last word model of this, doing one thing that is partially a cry for assist and partially a rejoinder to everybody who doubted her, disrespected her, deserted her, or just by no means listened to her. She slams her microphone into her face repeatedly, ending up lodging it deep inside her head via her eye socket. That is witnessed by hundreds of live performance attendees, which signifies that all of those individuals have simply shared a collective trauma, and likewise seemingly signifies that every one in every of them is now contaminated with the entity. (If there’s a Morris, the poor man has his work reduce out for him now!) As for Skye, she is not, however there’s a bitter irony to her destiny, a type of pyrrhic victory. To paraphrase KISS: they wished the mess, so now they have the remaining.

“Smile 2” is in theaters in all places.