Smile is an assortment of ingredients the audience has tasted before. An entity scares its subject continually in unnecessary ways until it eventually (possibly) kills its prey. And the death happens within a week. The main character loses grip on reality and no one believes there is a true source of fear. The tormenter targets victims that have been through trauma (Hello Vecna). Each time said tormenter appears, the world around the main character is dream-like and unreliable like a Freddy Krueger nightmare.
The film which premiered at Fantastic Fest 2022 might sound generic because it possesses familiar aspects but Parker Finn's big-screen debut injects it with freshly executed tension. The lack of originality in Smile's unnamed adversary will drive some insane. But Finn's ability to maintain a nail-biting sequence moment-to-moment that keeps the movie afloat. With scenes that are both hair-raising and disturbing.
The film centers around the theme of mental health. Sosie Bacon takes the lead as a doctor who handles patients with mental health issues. It's implied from the beginning that her character Rose has a traumatic past with someone in her youth committing suicide. What can be presumed from the start is her character took on the job for reasons involving her childhood trauma. Bacon invokes a level of sympathy in her performance from the beginning as her character conveys great empathy for those she cares for in the hospital.
Enter a new patient named Laura (Caitlin Stasey) who is fidgety and paranoid. She also exhibits signs of sanity as she speaks more lucidly than other patients we have seen with Rose. Laura is frantic and speaking nervously about something being after her; something only she can see. The same situation transpires as in the previews. Laura flips out and screams at nothing (or is there something?). Rose tries to call for help, turns around to find Laura hauntingly smiling at her as she cuts her own throat slowly without even flinching then falls to the ground. Sequences like this are unsettling because they linger on the horror. The direction could cut away but instead directs focus at the moment demanding the audience to stare at it.
After the suicide, Rose becomes the center of strange happenings. She begins having visions of her patients staring and smiling menacingly at her. The alarm in her house gets triggered at night for unexplained reasons. Pets go missing, nightmarish visions begin to increase, and everyone around Rose is concerned about her sanity. This plays into one of the film's strengths as there is a real sense of what it might be like to feel like a person losing grip on reality. The extra added layer to this mental health backdrop is the notion of Rose's mother having suicidal ideation when she was a child and the possible chemical imbalances from her mother being passed down.
Smile has a huge problem in that its characters make unrealistic choices (similar to Barbarian in some ways). It contains dialogue where characters actively make their problem worse by possessing the need to explain things poorly. Not to say people do not make stupid choices in real life. But for a character that has a Ph.D., Rose should know how she is coming across to friends and family. This main character makes very little effort to repurpose her approach and help her own situation.
As stated, the Paramount film Smile will live or die by its derived choices. The script (adapted from Finn's short film Laura Hasn't Slept) pulls from several sources to create a Frankenstein version of several horror movie ideas. Place Vecna's arms on the body (or The Night House spirit), attach Freddy Krueger as the head, Sadako from The Ring as the legs and torso, give it a Joker smile and strike that concoction with a bolt of electricity to watch it come to life. That is the familiar monstrous creation that is the screenplay.
The derived decisions do not break the film because the concepts are properly executed at a high point of intensity. The camera work makes the viewer constantly feel off balance as second unit shots give topsy-turvy visuals of city life and room settings. Parker Finn also put great use to visual effects, designing visions that will stay with the viewer overnight. This includes the reveal of the smiling entity which effectively rises to the promise of being terrifying. There is nothing worse than when the reveal takes away from the horrific setup.
Smile does not aim to reinvent the genre. But it does have interesting discussions on depression. As many know, depression can often wear a smile and be invisible until the unfortunate result of someone making a tragic decision. The underlying theme could have been more impactful. Still, the film remains an incredibly tense metaphor about faking happiness. And while it's not fresh in the innovation department, Smile is a tense and chilling horror experience for a director making a feature-length debut.
Smile will hit theaters on September 30.
Smile
A psychological horror film written and directed by newcomer Parker Finn, Smile is the story of a woman who, after witnessing a traumatic incident involving a patient, terrifying incidents keep occurring in her life. Sosie Bacon stars as Dr. Rose Cotter, the woman afflicted by these new realistic nightmares. The horrifying occurrences happen so frequently that Rose realizes she'll have to confront past trauma to escape this new reality and survive the supernatural forces trying to kill her.Â