Smile 2 ★★☆☆☆

It is hard to do grotesquerie without coming across as ableist or classist and I do not think the movie succeeds at that at all and it is frequently gory and nasty to the point of absurdity but I think that Skye actually has some surprising depth to her. She is mean, she lashes out, she alienates people, but it is clear that every time she does it is to try and arrest any control over her life back.
Grabbing and jerking the steering wheel of a moving car is obviously self-destructive but it is also the clearest illustration of that need to grab any power she can in a life where she is controlled, dictated and used as a marketing tool at all times. When a teleprompter fails her she spirals, unable to function when given any freedom because she has not been allowed to have any.
The curse turns the horror of her life up to eleven, forcing her to act and seemly claw back agency as she is pushed to the brink, only to reveal that it has just had her dancing on strings the whole time. That is kind of a double-edged sword for the movie to wield, though, as the big knife-twist at the end also makes it seem like at least the last third of the story just didn’t actually happen which comes off as a bit cheap to me.