'Smile' Review: A Frightening and Thematically-Rich Jump Fest
Smile is a supernatural psychological horror film from Paramount that offers crafty scares, suspenseful atmosphere, and a relevant message while struggling with a derivative plot, a so-so script, and a tiring runtime.
Smile follows therapist Rose Cotter (played by Sosie Bacon) as she is tormented by an evil presence that follows her everywhere, taking on the form of familiar faces twistedly smiling at her, counting down her impending gruesome death.
This is the feature film debut for writer-director Parker Finn featuring the aforementioned Sosie Bacon in the lead role, joined by a cast that includes Jessie T. Usher, Kyle Gallner, Caitlin Stasey, Kal Penn, and more. Finn based the story off his 2020 short horror film Laura Hasn’t Slept. Finn is also known for his 2018 hiking-horror short The Hidebehind.
Where Smile succeeds most is in being able to build and sustain solid tension and suspense, and along the way subvert expectations frequently to pull off quality jump scares. While not the movie’s own fault, most of the best jump scares were unfortunately spoiled in the trailer, but this ultimately did little to dampen the adrenaline spike received when they occurred on screen. The jump scares were handled intelligently and creatively, coming when least expected to make them the most effective and oftentimes following a false expectation just when guards are let down.
Coupled with the well-executed jump scares were some of the horrifying visuals that Smile offers its audience. There were a fair share of creepy body horror elements that made proper usage of practical effects to create bloody, seedy, and overall terrifying depictions of the movie’s evil smiling presence.
One thing to appreciate about Smile was how much it really pushes its limits and proceeds to display some gory and gruesome visuals fully front-and-center without cutting away or attempting to hide it, to provide for maximum goosebumps, spine tingles and revulsion in the audience.
While Smile is through-and-through a horror film, it features some surprisingly well-placed humor sprinkled throughout that frequently hits. Not only do these moments elicit laughs and chuckles, but more importantly they do not take at all from the horror aspects that they are built around. They serve to efficiently diffuse some of the tension to fit the needs of the scene and script.
An aspect in which Smile differentiates it from some of its modern horror counterparts is that it actually brings something significant to say to the table. The film is an exploration of trauma and mental illness, specifically on how mental illness can be just as contagious and debilitating as physical illness.
The film proceeds to really dive deep into dissecting the effects of trauma on not just an individual but on a family, as seen through the lens of our protagonist in her childhood upbringing and the nature of the evil presence plaguing her. This evil presence spreads from one unlucky individual to another by forcing them to witness an inexplicably traumatic “suicide,” generating a deep-cutting metaphor for how swiftly and easily trauma can spread, infect and impact one’s life.
Expanding upon this, Smile also provides relevant commentary on how mental illness is perceived and treated in our society, mainly through the character of Rose’s husband Trevor (Usher), who is not only dismissive and uncaring about her problems and woes, but actively seeks to leave her on her own to deal with them. By following Rose, we see how many people dismiss someone struggling with mental illness and trauma as simply “crazy” and not their own problem while not doing their part to get them the help they need, which Rose does in the form of her ex-boyfriend Joel (Gallner).
Leading into its finale, Smile seems to take an unconventional approach given its sensitive themes as our protagonist decides to take matters in her own hands and deal with the problem herself. First, it appears she is successful in defeating the representation of mental illness alone, and one would be totally within the right bounds to think that this undercuts the moral messaging of the whole film as a piss-poor fumbling of its mental health message to audiences.
However, this is not where the film really ends. Smile pulls the rug from underneath the viewers with a false ending, before getting into the real final battle between Rose and this evil presence. Ultimately, this results in Rose’s defeat at the hands of her struggles as she succumbs to its influence just in time to be used to kill herself extravagantly in front of Joel to spread the trauma and keep the cycle going. This ends the film on a very bleak and brutal note, but this ending is a very gut-punching way of bolstering its central message.
Rose sought to solve these mental and traumatic issues by secluding herself and handling them alone, and this ultimately proves an ineffective and unfortunate way to handle these sorts of issues leading to her sobering demise. The film then begs the question on if she had decided differently, to work through this situation with Joel by her side the whole time insteading of rejecting his help, would Rose have been able to overcome? These are the kinds of questions Smile leaves its audience asking that makes it such a thematically-rich horror film exploring trauma and mental illness.
Now, one way in which the film falls short is its length. Sitting at just under two hours, which is incredibly rare for a horror film of its nature, Smile definitely begins to lose steam as it enters its climax. While the first act and most of the second act have energy and intrigue and solid build-up, the momentum definitely starts to peter out leading into the final act and this causes the finale to slowly fizzle out in comparison. This film could definitely benefit from having its middle act trimmed to keep the movie about fifteen to twenty minutes shorter.
The central story idea for Smile, a curse that spreads from one unfortunate soul to the next with a time-limited deadline for encroaching death, is rather derivative of what came before it. While offering some unique motifs and details to stamp onto the final product, portions of this film can come across as quite generic especially in the exposition of the “rules” of this presence and how it unfolds. Smile might be on the top end of that horror trope, but it still unfortunately comes at the end of a long train of those tropes through horror film history.
Something frustrating about the film is the total lack of explanation as to what exactly this evil presence is. While surely intentional to make it feel all-the-more abstract and fit the metaphoric nature, one cannot help but feel like there is something missing to understand this presence in the context of the film. Anything from a demonic name to a more expansive history of its influence on Earth, aside from a few quick throwaway lines, could have been useful in learning what this thing is and how it works and make it leave more of a distinctive impact on the audience. This could also have been a great opportunity to help differentiate Smile from its horror movie peers with similar plots.
While Bacon does an excellent job in her leading role portraying a believable struggle with trauma and mental illness (as does Stasey in the role of Laura), a lot of the side characters felt lacking. The script for Smile could have used a dialogue spruce-up to make it feel a little more refined and polished, as a lot of lines came off stilted, awkward and, for lack of a better word, generic even if delivered by competent actors. The acting talent of Penn felt wasted as his character is not given much to do at all and his lines very unoriginal, and Usher had some questionable acting in his own role, especially when contrasted with his costar Bacon.
Overall, Smile is a horror film that offers plenty of effective jump scares, creepy visuals, and a compelling message about trauma and mental illness that still suffers from some generic tropes, a lengthy runtime, an unsatisfying lack of answers, and some questionable dialogue.