Pop stardom is hell: the starkly different philosophies of ‘Trap’ and ‘Smile 2’
In two and a half months, Hollywood released two big-budget horror thrillers featuring fictional female pop stars front and centre. M Night Shyamalan‘s Trap came first, with his real-life daughter and real-life singe, Saleka, playing Lady Raven, a star who becomes the film’s hero late in the game when she goes up against Josh Hartnett’s serial killer ‘The Butcher’. Then came Parker Finn’s Smile 2, which saw Naomi Scott’s Skye Riley battling the same malevolent smile demon which caused so much havoc in the first film. While the two films do share surface similarities in their depictions of modern pop stardom, by the time the credits have rolled on both, it becomes obvious that their overall philosophies are starkly different.
In 2024, cinema audiences have been particularly fascinated with getting close to the iconic female pop stars of the day. After all, the concert films Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour and Renaissance: A Film By Beyonce did enormous business in cinemas. Fans flocked to watch their heroes strut their stuff on stage, and it seemed to become almost as fun an experience as attending the concerts for real. Then Trap and Smile 2 came along and took a knife to the whole enterprise.
The early going of Trap brilliantly depicts the particular excitement that comes from hordes of teenage girls going to a concert—and the awkwardness of the parents who are often roped into chaperoning. Of course, considering this is a Shyamalan flick, all is not as it seems. The concert is actually an elaborate trap set up to catch Josh Hartnett’s notorious serial killer, who happens to be attending the gig with his daughter.
The film then shows him trying everything he can think of to escape, and it leads him and his daughter backstage to meet Lady Raven. Here, the star—played by the wide-eyed, not-quite-ready-for-Primetime Saleka—figures out what is going on and tries to expose Hartnett to the world. Ultimately, she is able to do this by secretly broadcasting a confession of his misdeeds to her millions of fans on social media.
In Shyamalan’s world, pop stardom has the potential for darkness – but only in a tangential fashion. Lady Raven has no idea there’s a serial killer at her gig hurting people as he tries to flee. She also doesn’t show many outward signs of struggling with fame. She simply happens to find herself face-to-face with a killer by happenstance and then goes into hero mode. In the end, Shyamalan’s depiction of pop stardom is positive – Lady Raven is able to mobilise her fanbase into doing a good deed, and everyone goes home happy. Well, except Hartnett’s devastated family, of course.
By contrast, Smile 2 takes a much, much darker view of pop stardom. Riley is a trainwreck from the outset of the film – a roiling mass of mental health issues, addictions, stress, and trauma. When she is infected by the smile parasite, it can play on her existing problems, convincing her that she is worthless and that everyone in her life hates her.
While it can never be confirmed how many of Riley’s issues were caused by the pressure of being a pop star versus how many are simply the same problems many of us face, Finn’s view of pop stardom is undoubtedly dimmer than Shyamalan’s. Sometimes, he makes it painfully clear that Riley is just seen as a meal ticket by her mother and the team of hangers-on that surround her. When she makes public appearances with her fans, she can’t differentiate between the genuine ones and the ones who are potentially harmful to her.
Finn shows that people can’t help thinking pop stars owe them something because they are rich public figures—but Riley is just a person struggling to keep her head above water, just like anyone else. By the end of the film, it has become clear that Riley might have some of the same issues if she wasn’t a globally famous pop star, but it certainly hasn’t helped her. In fact, it’s made her miserable.
In the end, both philosophies of pop stardom are probably valid, and it must be said that the movies are trying to accomplish very different things. But it’s hard not to think that Finn’s vision may be more realistic, while Shyamalan’s is the one a father of daughters would like to believe is true.
