Smile Is Horror That Truly Makes You Smile
I love horror movies. More precisely, I love watching it with other people. I love seeing people squirm in their seats, hold their breaths, cover their eyes, or shriek from surprise. But the best horror films, I think, are the ones where audiences stay quiet, afraid to make a sound because what’s on screen is so terrifying that viewers try to make themselves as invisible as possible because, you know, just in case.
Smile is just that kind of horror film. Written and directed by Parker Finn in his feature length debut, Smile is one of the most delightfully terrifying films in a good, long while. Based on Finn’s short film Laura Hasn’t Slept, it follows the experiences of Dr. Rose Cotter (Sosie Bacon), a young therapist whose troubles start when she meets a college student named Laura (Caitlin Stasey, who was the lead in Laura Hasn’t Slept). Laura is utterly terrified that something is out to get her, haunted and hunted by an entity that “looks like people but isn’t a person.”
When Rose witnesses Laura slit her own throat with a maniacal grin, it compounds the trauma she already had from childhood when she witnessed the death of her own mother by suicide. This is Smile’s main theme and conceit, how the cyclical nature of trauma—particularly the trauma of witnessing suicide—is a horror in itself. Rose begins to see visions of people with plastered on smiles and she starts to lose her grip on reality.
The film touches on mental illness, an inevitable exploration given Rose’s occupation, but deftly points towards the supernatural. It should be clear to audiences that this isn’t happening all in Rose’s head, despite nearly everyone, from Rose’s fiancé Trevor (Jessie T. Usher) to her boss Dr. Desai (Kal Penn) thinking that it’s just some amplified manifestation of PTSD.
There’s room for conversation about how sufferers of trauma don’t receive adequate care, particularly as even Rose’s own therapist, Dr. Madeline Northcott (Robin Weigert), tries to talk her through her breakdown. But we trust that this is fiction, and that the ‘nutjobs’ and ‘head cases’ (actual terms dismissively used by people in the film) don’t actually see sinister beings out to kill them. But Smile plants that tiny seed of, ‘what if?’ in your head, anyway, which is partly why it works so well.
Finn does a terrific job of setting up jump scares, but doesn’t rely on them to deliver the chills. Finn makes effective use of angles and utilizes the unsettling technique of rotating the camera to thread the film with a motif of having one’s world turned upside down. The sheer anxiety of anticipation, thinking that there’s a smiling face waiting as the camera pans, is an exquisite thrill.
Someone smiling creepily with an empty stare filled with malice is often unsettling enough, but Smile infuses it with a new horror movie mythology that can be spun into more stories. Basically, the entity or curse is passed on through the trauma of seeing someone commit suicide. And just like all good horror movie curses, there’s a way to lift it.
The only person who believes Rose is her old paramour Joel (Kyle Gallner), a police detective who helps her piece the gruesome puzzle together. Finn takes cues from Asian horror films like The Ring or The Grudge, and because it is a good horror movie curse, Rose only has a few days to figure out how to lift it before it finally consumes her. When Rose finally gets the answer, the price to rid herself of the unspeakable evil might be too high for her to pay.
Part of what makes Smile so terrifying is that Rose is completely alone in the experience. Nobody else can see the malevolent force that’s torturing her and it’s quite possibly all inside her head, controlling her perception to the point where she can’t trust anyone, not even herself. The Smile demon, who dons a roulette of deeply disturbing facades, is a wonderful and worthy addition to the Hollywood horror movie pantheon.
Smile is a truly enjoyable watch, that is, if you enjoy your hair involuntarily standing on end. The story lingers after you’ve left the cinema, much like first time you watch The Ring. While the smile demon is no Sadako (it doesn’t even have a proper name), the idea that anyone’s smile can be transformed into a grotesque parody, almost like the popular momo meme, is a haunting one. The film’s exploration of trauma and grief lacks depth, but otherwise the entire experience should leave audiences with a satisfied smile.
Smile is now showing in cinemas nationwide.
