If ever there was an example of what a decent marketing film could do for a film, just look at Smile. Made on a shoestring of a budget ($17 million), the eerie posters of demented smiles helped secure bum on seats to bring in an impressive box office taking of over $200 million.

With that kind of smile on the faces of the producers and execs, a sequel was inevitable.

Getting ready for a world tour is pop sensation is Skye Riley (Naomi Scott). She’s had a rough year or so, involved in a tragic car accident, which then saw her on a drugs and booze bender.

But now she’s back, and looking forward to continuing her success. She’s hampered by pain though, from the car accident, so goes to a friend’s place who can hook her up with some pain medication.

Unfortunately for her, her friend Lewis (Lukas Gage) is seemingly strung out on his own product, talking gibberish and not being of sound mind. Little does Skye know that Lewis has been cursed by an evil entity, and that she’s about to be exposed to it herself by well and truly getting in her head.

Writer and director Parker Finn follows up his directorial debut with this unimpressive sequel.

With only his second film Finn gets overly self-indulgent, delivering a bloated two hour plus bore fest. It’s as if he was delusional himself, making what he believed to be an A24 film, which is already a concern knowing how overrated many of them are.

It’s not helped with all the focus being on one individual, Skye, played by British actress Scott. It’s a bland performance of an even more bland character, who manages to be devoid of any personality whatsoever.

Finn’s laborious narrative doesn’t help either. Probably its biggest issue is its antagonist, in that it doesn’t really have one. Some films can get away with it, like The Exorcist, which many claim to be the best horror film of all time. But Finn’s film and story is in such a lower league, and by not having a defined foe in any shape of form, gives an audience nothing to be really fearful of. Yes it gets gory, but without a tangible connection to a defined malevolent force, you just have a special effects department making their money in a very isolated fashion.

Audiences were obviously turned off by it, doing significantly less at the box office – no doubt not having such a less unique marketing campaign this time around didn’t help. But the fact Finn still made it for silly money – this time around $30 million – still means the studio with be bathing in more profit.

This means, sadly, that another Smile is bound to be on its way, but with it wearing thin fast, Finn will need to work on his storytelling skills to keep both his executives and audience happy, because more of this drivel is likely to wipe the smiles off of everyone’s faces.