Clam Neck Stretch Not Satisfying Enough

I am making a game where a clam stretches its neck out super fast and super long to grab things. In order to accomplish this effect, I made an object to represent the tip of the neck and I send it moving straight upwards when the stretch begins. Along its path, I want to be able to curve it using the left and right arrow keys, allowing the player to control the trajectory in a way that feels not unlike Ness' Up-B in Smash Bros.

The neck is represented by a line traced using LineRenderer. I keep track of the many points hit along the way so that I can have the neck contract and have the tip move backwards along the path.

Here is a video of the controller in action.

As you can see, the movement is not very satisfying, nor is it very flexible (it would hard to accurately hit a target). I don't like the way that it picks up speed due to my use of AddForce but I do not know how else to push the end of the neck along. Also, The turning itself is choppy since it occurs only when I add a new point (when the position is far away enough from the last point) that I update the rotation using abar's solution for a 2D lookat equivalent.

Here is my script:

 using System.Collections;
 using System.Collections.Generic;
 using UnityEngine;
 using System;
 using System.Linq;
 
 
 public class Liney : MonoBehaviour 
 {
     LineRenderer lr;
     List<Vector3> points = new List<Vector3>();
 
     Rigidbody2D rb; 
     Vector3 myStartPos;
     Vector3 myPos;
     Vector3 myLastPos;
 
     private float speed;
 
     void Awake()
     {
         lr = GetComponent<LineRenderer>();
         rb = GetComponent<Rigidbody2D>();
 
         myStartPos = new Vector3(rb.transform.position.x, rb.transform.position.y, 0);
         myPos = myStartPos;
     }
 
     void UpdateMyPosition()
     {
         myLastPos = myPos;
         myPos.Set(rb.transform.position.x, rb.transform.position.y, 0);
 
     }
     
     // Update is called once per frame
     void Update ()
     {
         UpdateMyPosition();
          
         if (Input.GetKeyDown (KeyCode.Space)) 
         {
             rb.velocity = speed * rb.transform.up;
 
             points.Clear ();
             lr.positionCount = 2;
 
             points.Add(myPos);
             points.Add(myPos);
             lr.SetPositions(points.ToArray());
         }
         
 
         else if (Input.GetKey(KeyCode.Space))
         {
             if(Input.GetKey(KeyCode.LeftArrow))
                 rb.AddForce(-1 * rb.transform.right );
             if(Input.GetKey(KeyCode.RightArrow))
                 rb.AddForce(1 * rb.transform.right );
 
 
             if(Vector3.Distance(points.Last(), myPos) > .05f)
             {
                 lr.positionCount++;
                 points.Add(myPos);
                 lr.SetPositions(points.ToArray());
                 transform.up = -1* (myLastPos - myPos);
             }
 
             else
             {
                 lr.SetPosition(lr.positionCount - 1, myPos);
             }
         }
     }
 }