THE FOLLOWING REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS OF THE DISCUSSED FILM. READERS DISCRETION IS ADVISED.
Sometimes, the simplest of things one can do can be effective in the most unexpected of ways. You don’t buy that? Try to Smile and see what happens.
PLOT
Based on the 2020 short Laura Hasn’t Slept, The film follows Doctor Rose Cotter who works at a psychiatric ward as a therapist. Her life goes through a drastic change when meeting a graduate student named Laura Weaver who claims to have seen an entity kill her professor a week prior. She then explains that when it possesses people, it makes them smile villainously before making them take their lives. Just after explaining this, she would stumble and scream in terror. Rose would witness her smile as such when she slits her throat with a shard of a broken vase. Some time after this, she would see another patient Carl (Jack Sochet) give the same smile, when he was actually asleep. Worried for her well being, her supervisor Dr. Morgan Desai gives her a paid week off. As the said week progresses, her hallucinations would go on and it would make Rose appear unhinged towards her loved ones, her fiancé Trevor and sister Holly (Gillian Zinser). When she attends the birthday party of her nephew, it would go out of her hand when her gift to him is replaced by her own dead cat. The party would end when she falls onto a glass table, believing to have seen a party attendant smile like Laura did. When Rose visits her therapist Madeline Northcott (Robein Weigert), the latter suggests that her issues could stem from her troubled childhood whereas her abusive mother died from an overdose. She does try to tell Trevor that she could be cursed by the entity Laura mentioned, but he doesn’t believe her. When she found out Laura’s professor was smiling as well before he died, she visits his widow who explains that he became unstable after seeing another woman take her life a week before he would do the same. Rose would then seek help of her ex boyfriend Joel to look through police records. When he does, they see the pattern of people taking their lives after seeing others do the same a week before, which confirms Rose is indeed cursed. She would explain her situation to Holly, but she doesn’t believe her either. As the hallucinations worsen, Joel would reach out and share that a man named Robert Talley escaped the curse by killing someone else. When they visit him in prison, he explains that due to the entity feeding on trauma, the only way to escape is to pass it on by brutally killing someone in front of a witness, which’ll cause major trauma. She almost kills Carl in front of Morgan and believes to have done it before waking up from another hallucination, only pulling up to her workplace. Before she would drive away, Morgan would alert the police after noticing her with a knife. Convinced that the cycle can’t go on if remaining alone, Rose would go to her abandoned childhood home. She would confront the entity that takes the form of her mother, admitting that she ignored her pleas after she overdosed out of fear. She would appear to defeat the entity by setting it on fire. Just when she reunites with Joel, his smile has her realize she was in her last hallucination. When she wakes up from it, she sees that she hadn’t gotten in the old house yet and the real Joel barely arrives after tracking her phone. Unsure if she is real or not, she locks herself in the house to confront the entity for real. This time, it forces itself inside her body through her mouth to officially possess her. The film ends with Joel breaking down the door, unknowingly letting the curse pass on to him as Rose dies smiling when setting herself on fire.
THOUGHTS
I definitely felt bound to check this out considering that the marketing was off the charts and hearing that people generally enjoyed it. So when I got around it, I'm surprised to say that it's not that bad. Writer/Director Parker Finn did a fine job in expanding his original story to make it far more intense than expected. With sharp editing from Elliot Greenberg and a bone rattling score by Cristobal Tapia de Veer, every time you think you're safe, you quickly realize you likely ain't gonna recover. Of course this stressful feeling comes from the fictional creature that is indeed haunting to uncover. While this entity does have a fair share of inspiration from other classic films, as it remains unseen to the un-cursed like It Follows and kills you within a week like The Ring franchise, it does the job in still scaring you with ease. The fact that it chooses to make the victims smile before they die is a bold way for it to mock the pain it was already taunting them with. It also becomes the allegory for people to actually deal with emotional pain rather than face it. The visual effects definitely make us get exhausted with good timing hallucination jump scares. Aside from all the smiling, I was definitely startled when Holly's head twisted upside down. Even after moments like that, I was still not prepared to see the entity in its official form, where it reveals to be a skinless humanoid with multiple sets of malformed jaws nested within its already enormous mouth, that left me rattled all night. I was really hoping odds would be high for this demon to be defeated, but seeing it get the last laugh makes a lot of sense. Seeing it succeed in the end told me that you can overcome trauma, but it's better to confront it earlier and with help from others because it won't be effective if you wait to do it alone. I would've not understood this without following the journey our main character went through. Sosie Bacon gives a raw performance for the role of Rose whose trauma has broken her deeply due to the decision of not confronting it. I don't blame her feeling guilty of her past because no one wants to feel such when their parent(s) die. You just feel bad for her the whole time because her to be emotionally recovered, leaving a frown on my face for her to do it when it was too late. Even though her chances were slim, you respect her trying as hard as she could. While Holly has good reason to be distant towards Rose, it can't be justified for Trevor. Jessie T Usher easily shows the guy to be one who chooses to live too easy of a life. Even though he starts out supportive for the woman he seems to love, he basically gives up midway and it is so infuriating to see. It surprises me that the curse didn't pass on to her because he was an ass for not being helpful all the way. With her family refusing to see things in her lenses, it's a relief that there were others that put her before themselves. Morgan may have been clueless of what was going on, but Kal Penn made it clear that he was very compassionate of her well being, like a good boss should. On the other hand, Rose was lucky to have a confidant out of Joel. Kyle Gallner made him likable because he digests the situation little by little and once he understands everything, he remains selfless and chooses to help however he knows. It's clear that he never stopped caring about her although she pushed him away for being too open. It may be his job to help people, but it ain't the case for caring. His sympathy is so natural, you can't stop admiring it. Now that the curse passed on to him, you really hope he figures out how to find a way out without the sake of more casualties. Considering that Rose was the new victim trying to overcome her curse, it made sense to see other victims that were as vulnerable as she was. The opening of the movie sells me thanks to Caitlin Stasey being stunning as Laura. The 180 she gives from being super petrified to being silently wicked with the smile was incredible and from there, I stayed onboard which I don't regret. Last but not least, I was very impressed with Rob Morgan's appearance as Robert. The guy had no pleasure in his sin but accepted it because he thought he was safe, or at least he thought. If it's possible for the curse to return to him when meeting a new victim, that would be a wild concept to explore, trying to figure out how to escape it again. Even though I enjoyed this film very much, there were multiple moments that bothered me as I watched it. I know it's a given for cops to be clueless during horror, but why the hell would Joel's partner use the term 'head case' at a hospital? I know he wants to get to the point wondering Laura's state of mind before death, but that was not an appropriate way to go about it. I respect that this movie relies on jump scares because its a given within the horror genre, but it backfires when Trevor enters the house. I do not understand how he got in the house quietly, it is just so dumb for me to accept. And how come he wasn't at the birthday party? When we see him at the hospital, he's not wearing working clothes. If it was Casual Friday or he was cheating on Rose, I'd like to know that. Also, why doesn't Rose cancel on the dinner date? She just saw someone unwillingly commit suicide, that's good enough of a reason to not go out. You know I don't like continuity errors, so I gotta admit it was so weird to see Rosie tap on the alarm without touching actual buttons. They should've zoomed out on that shot to make it more believable for me. I also can't believe how lazy Joel originally was, where he didn't want to help Rose on his day off but was willing to visit her in the middle of his shift days prior. The hypocrisy is so damn annoying to think about. I'm even confused on how much can really happen in a day where Rose's cat is found dead at her nephew's party, she visits Joel and gets a visit from Madeline while also getting to visit a victim's widow. I'm sorry, but that had to be a set of different days for all of that to happen. My head then starts spinning on how is Joel the only cop to notice the smiling suicide pattern? I mean the obliviousness is insane. 20 cases should spark curiosity. And lastly, why didn't Rose hide the knife? I understand she's hardly in control due to her curse, but she should've tried to act fast once she broke out of the hallucination, whether or not she knew Morgan would be outside. Ignore this and you'll enjoy the movie for what it is. In short, Smile exceeds my expectations as a generally fine horror film, one of the genre's many hits in 2022. You like getting scared? I'm sure this one can do the trick as well.
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