Smile was an interesting film for Robert Salerno, a legendary producer whose work encompasses some of the most distinct and bold cinema of this century so far (We Need to Talk About Kevin, A Single Man, Nocturnal Animals, I’m Thinking of Ending Things, 21 Grams, Arbitrage). Unlike the acclaimed directors behind those films (Iñárritu, Kaufman, Ford, Ramsay, Jarecki), Parker Finn’s Smile was his feature directorial debut. And yet it all worked out winningly, with Smile becoming one of the biggest horror hits of the year, both with critics and audiences.
Now, a sequel (a Salerno first) simply titled Smile 2 is coming out in less than a month. When we spoke with Salerno, we asked when he, Finn, and the whole team first knew that a Smile sequel was definitely in the cards. “Pretty early on,” said Salerno, adding:
“As soon as the first one came out, it felt like it was just this
lightning in a bottle
. So that really was very exciting to all of us to see. I mean, we all felt we made a great movie the first time. But it wasn’t until it really took off that we’re like, ‘
Oh, my God, we have to keep doing this. This needs to — this is a story that needs to keep being told
.”
Smile, of course, was a hard horror film, different from any that Salerno had produced. “I have not done a horror like that. Smile was the first hardcore horror genre movie I’d done. I’ve done movies that are more tonally in the horror of things, there’s We Need to Talk About Kevin; they’re just more emotional horror films, is what I’ve done. And Smile was bursting it out.” Now, Salerno is stepping into the director’s chair for his first feature, and guess what? It’s a horror film, albeit a much more dramatic, cinematic, and emotional one.
From Producing Smile to Directing Here After
Palerno’s new film is called Here After, and the Connie Britton-led story is more of a supernatural drama than an outright horror film, more of a Don’t Look Now than a Halloween. And the Don’t Look Now comparison is apt — Here After is a ghostly story set in Italy about a traumatized parent.
While it doesn’t have the wet menace of Venice, it does incorporate the meticulous Catholic iconography of Rome to its advantage in telling a deeply serious story of a woman whose daughter miraculously survives death, but may have brought a dark spirit back with her from the other side. Like a few of the films Salerno has produced, it is a heavily emotional film that’s technically horror but is ultimately a universal drama.
“I’m really interested and fascinated with finding ways to make that balance of an emotional horror that can also be, probably not as broad and bold as Smile, but find the balance between those,” explained Salerno. “And I feel like, you know, this is only the beginning.”
We can’t wait to see what else is coming. Here After was released on Sep. 13, 2024, in theaters and on demand, while Smile 2 hits theaters on Oct. 18, 2024. Salerno’s upcoming film Rothko also looks like a winner; more on that later.
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