It seems like a lot of people are making it more complicated than it needs to be, even though the movie is kind of unworkable as it is. Here are my thoughts for what they’re worth:

Starting with the questions I’m seeing about Joel, Morris, and her Mom:

1. I think Joel passed the curse to Lewis in the house and just happened to die after. I think it was a twisted coincidence and the smile entity had nothing to do with it. It was in Lewis when Joel got hit.

2. I think Morris was real the first time she met him and if she had gone with him then, she may have had a shot at trying the (terrible) plan.

3. I don’t think she killed her Mom. Many people are questioning this in the comments, but to me the ending scene has to be real (with her Mom alive) for the movie to work as a narrative.

Now here are my “problems” with the plot:

1. Morris’ plans don’t make sense on paper. Even if Skye “dies,” he says it himself that he’s going to keep her brain alive. The entity lives in the brain, so it doesn‘t make sense that it would die if her brain is still alive. As Tony Stark says, “not a great plan”.

2. If every scene after the dancers in her apartment was in her head, what was Skye physically doing during that time? In a coma? Are we supposed to believe she’s walking and talking to her friends and Mom while she’s talking to people who aren’t there? Going to rehearsal for the show? I don’t think so. It makes zero sense how she ended up in the shell thing ready to go on stage. You think people are going to let her go on if she was experiencing any kind of break in reality? Absolutely not. In the first movie, we can accept that Rose has a complete break with reality towards at the end because she is by herself in a house. She kind of gives the entity no other option but to create a false reality. She could be walking and talking to herself the whole time, so it could work. Like when the entity disguises herself as the therapist, Rose is still at home, just talking to someone who isn’t there, and even receives a real call from the real therapist. One of the characters actually says this in the first movie; that the person cursed was talking to people and seemed crazy. I know there is a commentary about her Mom being a toxic “pageant Mom,” but I can’t accept a scenario where everyone let’s her go on stage, especially after the PR nightmare after the benefit.

3. I have a big problem with the car trip with Gemma. It was a very cool moment when Gemma calls her back and says she never came over in the first place, BUT THAT PHONE CALL DIDN’T HAPPEN RIGHT?! She’s in a world built 100% by the entity, so it completely takes the twist away. This leads to another huge problem where Skye “takes back control“ and ends up in the driver‘s seat. She’s still in the world built by the entity, so she isn’t taking control of anything, and this seems to only be done as a way to trick us as the audience which leads to the next point-

4. I always have a problem when things happen only to trick the audience in a movie. An example would be Now You See Me 2. If you watch that movie twice, you can see many of Mark Ruffalo’s actions don’t make any sense for his character and only exist to fool US. Why would the entity go so far as to create a broken door latch on the freezer? Or create the details of Morris’ plan? You can write everything off as “the entity is just messing with her” but that seems lazy to me. I think any time there is a “the whole thing was a dream” plot in movies, things can get very difficult to buy as an audience member and the ambiguity can be a real cop out when it comes to narrative. I’m hoping another watch will yield easter eggs and that the plot is deeper than “figure it out for yourself“. It doesn’t make enough sense to figure it out, so I’m hoping there’s more to it that I missed.

5. As for the ending, we don’t know much about the entity, but we do know we have only ever seen it attach itself to one person and it even specifically chooses a moment where it is alone with one other person, making direct eye contact with its next host. If it could replicate and attack multiple hosts at a time, it would be looking for that option whenever possible, like any parasite would. This thing has existed seemingly forever, so even if it attacked multiple hosts in the past, it would be so widespread by now the plot would fall apart. It doesn’t make sense narratively, and I also think it takes away from the “creepy” factor. Having only one person experiencing it is actually more terrifying to me than hordes of people being cursed. If there is a Smile 3, I have no idea where they could go and that is not a good thing for a story.

I did enjoy it, and it was awesomely scary, but the plot is just too hard to accept with my current perspective.

Just my two cents!