FilmSnobReviews

Title: Smile
MPAA Rating: R
Director: Parker Finn
Starring: Sosie Bacon, Jessie T. Usher, Kyle Gallner
Runtime: 1 hr 55 mins

What It Is: Dr. Rose Cutter (Bacon) is used to taking care of sensitive cases of mental illness in patients, but when one of her patients, Laura (Caitlin Stasey) kills herself on front of Rose, she begins to suspect the reason for the suicide is far more mysterious and even paranormal when she begins experiencing intense visions of a smiling entity taking the form of her peers following her around. Rose begins spiraling into a dangerous search for the answer, enlisting the help of a considerate police officer named Joel (Gallner) to help her find an end to a horrifying means.

What We Think: With brilliantly attractive marketing in tow, Smile is successful at promising scares and gore that will follow you around. The potential of the terrors to be was tremendous, many hyped to experience the film behind a now notorious trailer jump scare and an IRL-approach to advertising as actors were found smiling threateningly in the background of a baseball game. We were thrilled of what could be–but the reality is unfortunate and very, embarrassingly disappointing. Borrowing logic, mechanics, scares, tropes, visuals, and villains from numerous titles such as It Follows, Truth or Dare, The Empty Man, Smiley, Malignant, and even The Bye Bye Man, Smile is unfortunately nothing new. Turns out making actors smile creepily at the camera gets old after the first one, but what also bugged me was how inconsistent their expressions were–sometimes demonic, other times just hilariously exaggerated. I swear, if Truth or Dare hadn’t done the CG effects to exaggerate the facial expressions, Smile would have done the very same thing (which I think would have honestly worked in its favor, but again, it’s already been done). The plot is thick–all those things we’ve seen time and time again with attempts at psychological horror with silly results. Weirdly, no one really reacts to the protagonist’s very obvious troubled state like real people would; the entire time, the film wants you to believe that not only are people in denial of how important it is to respect people’s mental health, but also makes every other character call a very clearly distressed woman–a DOCTOR, no less–“crazy.” It’s redundant and annoying, and it felt like it was trying to hammer in some sort of message of how inconsiderate society is towards mental illness but without much of a relatable or realistic application. Rosemary’s Baby is a great example of the main character being lead to believe she’s insane by everyone else, but under the guise of them trying to “help” her. Rather here, every other character other than Rose and Joel basically repeats the same spiel. Not to mention there are no interesting characters–just carbon copies of those we’ve seen before, watered down in order to make room for accessibility and an attempt at “cool evil creature reveal,” which, if the movie wasn’t so boring and repetitive, maybe it would have had more of a hold on me, but by the time I reached the end, I was just ready for it to be over and move on. Also a note: the trailer jump-scare was great in the trailer, but the movie felt so flat that it wasn’t even that effective in context.

 Our Grade: D-, Solid performances are mitigated by a washed-out concept, weak scares, and flat characters in this failure of a horror flick. In its stead, I would recommend It Follows or even Drag Me to Hell, films with a somewhat similar concept that actually deliver scares, psychological horror, and relatable, natural characters. This is just another Hollywood-funded flick to attract the masses based on gimmick. Albeit, the gimmicks they used worked in getting people into the theaters, but the shelf-life of this film thereafter won’t have much of a hold, as I’m doing work to forget this movie exists as quickly as possible.