No one in Smile or its sequel, Smile 2, has figured out how to beat the monster. This is a skinless, meaty, human-ish parasite in search of hosts. It drives its victims to suicide by stalking them with hallucinated images. If you see someone die in this way, you are next. You will begin to see something that “looks like people but is not a person,” as a distressed student puts it in the first film. Such people have their faces pulled into the titular rictus.

In Smile, the monster resembles the pressure incumbent upon us all, no matter how traumatized, to put on a smile for the world. The sequel adds something new. Here the smile infects a commodity: a pop star, Skye Riley, played by Naomi Scott. A smile is already being forced out of Skye by a rival monstrosity: her record company. Exposure to the smile monster only compounds the pressure.

Smile 2 shows a horrifying scenario in which the urge to do violence to the body presents itself as the only way to fight back against the self-destroying demands of capital. It is a film about life in a system that values people solely for their ability to perform profitable functions and demands good cheer in the face of relentless exploitation. Yet despite its realism, the film is framed by a fictional premise: the idea that there is no way out other than self-destruction.