‘Smile’ Review: Lackluster Horror Puts a Frown on Your Face
Smile
R: Strong violent content and grisly images, and language
Runtime: 1 Hour and 55 Minutes
Production Companies: Temple Hill Entertainment, Paramount Players
Distributor: Paramount Pictures
Director: Parker Finn
Writers: Parker Finn
Cast: Sosie Bacon, Jessie T. Usher, Kyle Gallner, Caitlin Stasey, Kal Penn, Rob Morgan
Release Date: September 30, 2022
Theatrical Only
After witnessing a bizarre, traumatic incident involving a patient, Dr. Rose Cotter (Sosie Bacon) starts experiencing frightening occurrences that she can't explain. As an overwhelming terror begins taking over her life, Rose must confront her troubling past in order to survive and escape her horrifying new reality.
Writer/director Parker Finn’s feature directorial debut dares to send chills down the viewer’s spine with a Smile. It’s based on his short film Laura Hasn't Slept, which followed a troubled woman in therapy being haunted by an entity linked to her deep-rooted trauma.
Smile’s attempt at mixing commentary about mental health while creating a malignant figure is ambitious, to say the least. Finn’s strongest writing suit is the characterization of his lead, Dr. Rose Cotter (Sosie Bacon), a psychiatric therapist who gets cursed after seeing a patient kill herself. Despite her occupation, Cotter harbors her own trauma. She's a workaholic who would rather spend time with her patients than in her lavish middle-class house with her adorable cat and her fiancé (Jessie T. Usher). Once this smiling curse grips her she slowly descends into madness; she keeps the reality of her condition to herself, much like her childhood trauma. Cotter is an enticing protagonist and Sosie Bacon confidently carries the film with an engrossing performance.
Smile delivers decent jump scares from time to time. Most of the scares are the usual loud auditory beats that trigger your sensory system. The disturbing visuals take you by surprise, sometimes subverting expectations. This movie managed to get me good with two car-set jump scares, which is probably the weakest location to get cheap scares from. That said, it’s not like there’s much competition in the horror category this year.
Expanding on a short film is a difficult feat, yet some filmmakers can make magic happen. Despite its intentions, Smile can’t settle on an atmosphere and the overly familiar storytelling doesn’t correlate with its overall theme.
Critics will likely draw comparisons between Smile and It Follows or The Ring, for its story formula is reminiscent of those movies. You have a cursed woman with an entity following her. There’s a ticking time clock to investigate the lore of that curse, along with figuring out how to get rid of it, before she goes insane and eventually dies. It’s been done countless times but it’s fun finding new horror flicks that add a unique spin to it. While It Follows and The Ring are built upon a compelling theme or a clever concept, Smile fails to commit to either.
Dr. Rose is an identifiable protagonist who you root for. Everyone surrounding her has that weird Todd Phillips effect where they’re written to be an over-the-top, one-note asshole who gives the film a mean-spirited tone. Due to her occupation as a psychiatric therapist working with patients suffering from mental illnesses, everyone from her sister to the police ridiculed said patients in an ableist manner. It’s startling how much unnecessary and uncomfortable ableist dialogue is featured in the screenplay. It’s not as if anybody ends up getting their comeuppance for their behavior, for fate is solely applied to Rose alone.
The resounding theme of trauma comes across as rote and underdeveloped. Rose’s disturbing childhood is emphasized during the first act and doubled down in the climax, but it’s thrown out the window for a good chunk of the story. Finn’s focus deviates from developing Rose so he could deliver jump scares while following the routine of a paranormal procedural. Any correlation between her trauma and the smiling curse is so loose that when it returns for its emotionally charged finale, it’s completely unearned. Finn seems so concerned about Rose’s descent into madness to get a rise out of his audience that he forgot to add any sort of cohesion to his overall theme.
Smile makes you frown with how poorly it incorporates humor amid its scares. I was surprised by how many jokes are thrown into the story. While it excels at having dark humor to match the atmosphere, most of the blatant jokes feel telegraphed. We’re talking about bad dialogue that sounds like it was pulled from a sitcom. It feels like it’s in desperate need of a laugh track after each horror-turned-comedic moment.
Throughout Smile, Sosie Bacon is haunted by an entity that makes her hear voices. I, too, was hearing a voice: it was Jamie Lee Curtis saying, “It’s about trauma.” Parker Finn’s concept and ambition are seen through his passionate direction, but Smile’s script is full of formulaic plotting, lame humor, and an unfocused theme. At the end of the day, Smile leaves you feeling ._.
