Whenever you have an original breakout hit in the horror genre it generally means you can expect at least about eight sequels cashing in on the concept. The latest to spawn a hoped-for franchise is writer-director Finn Parker’s follow-up to his smash 2022 debut feature Smile (which made $200 million globally), which he promises is “bigger, bolder, more off the rails, nastier and bloodier” and 10 times the impact of the first film. That may be, but Smile 2, at a bloated running time of 2 hours and 7 minutes, is basically just following the template of the original, which dealt with a metaphysical being inhabiting its victims in the form of a human with a haunting smile on their face, actually a curse passed on from one possessed individual to the next.

In Smile the key protagonist was a psychiatrist, Dr. Rose Cotter, played gamely by Sosi Bacon who in her quest to...