Director Parker Finn opened up about ‘s terrifying hallway scene, which was created to look like a dance sequence. Since its theatrical debut, the Naomi Scott-led horror sequel has received a Certified Fresh score of 86% on Rotten Tomatoes, based on 195 reviews. “About to embark on a new world tour, global pop sensation Skye Riley begins experiencing increasingly terrifying and inexplicable events,” reads the synopsis. “Overwhelmed by the escalating horrors and the pressures of fame, Skye is forced to face her dark past to regain control of her life before it spirals out of control.” During an interview with ComingSoon, Finn revealed they worked with dance choreographer Celia Rowlson-Hawl to bring Smile 2’s terrifying hallway scene to life.
He also recalled how it exciting it was to shoot the iconic sequence, and confirmed that everyone on set was impressed. “This scene was fully choreographed.
I worked with my choreographer, Celia Rowlson-Hall, and several of the troupe in there are from her backup dancers as well. So there’s that continuity,” Finn shared. “We always talked about it almost feeling like… I was curious to see if I could do something that felt just as much Hideo Nakata as it does Bob Fosse, you know?
So we talked about like All That Jazz and that sort of thing.” He continued, “But the trick of it was creating this red light, green light game that instantly the Smiler starts cheating at.
So you can’t quite wrap your hands around the rules of it. The trick was that Naomi was at the center of this choreography, but for her, it needed to feel like she was just reacting and not performing the steps of what really is almost like a dance.