“Smile” is a 2022 horror film directed by Parker Finn and starring Sosie Bacon which tells the story of Dr. Rose Cotter, a psychiatrist who starts to experience disturbing hallucinations after witnessing a patient commit suicide. She soon discovers that something sinister is taking over her.
Spoilers ahead.
“Smile” is a typical horror film for the most part, but it does manage to escape this at certain moments. The addition of making the main character a psychologist is a very nice touch. This way, it makes it more believable that it would take Dr. Cotter about 45 minutes into the film to realize that she herself does not have a neurological issue.
Dr. Cotter is very smart in her investigation as well. When she discovers that her patient that committed suicide also witnessed someone commit suicide, she was able to see the scope of the spirit that was taking control of her.
Even though the idea was smart, the execution was not. It comes off as idiotic when the people around Dr. Cotter are unable to believe that a psychiatrist can recognize that something non-neurological is happening to her.
Nobody in the film listens and it feels like the people in the film are ready to shut her down before she speaks. Her boyfriend only half-listens to her, even though she clearly had a breakdown and had just gotten out of the hospital, and her sister just dismisses her as crazy.
The director tries to make sense of it, with the history of mental illness in Dr. Cotter’s family, but the psychiatrist had not had any incidents like this in her own past.
While the execution of Dr. Cotter’s character was not successful, one of the film’s biggest strengths comes in its villain. The smile monster is designed well and provided a lot of energy and fun that the movie usually lacked.
The problem, however, is the clash of tones that the evil spirit causes. The scenes featuring it are goofy and fun, however, the scenes around the monster are taken very seriously. There is nothing humorous throughout the film, and if the film were to be more successful, it needed to either be serious or goofy. As is, the goofiness of the smile spirit scenes undercut the serious nature of the rest of the movie, which creates a bit of a mess.
Although the film suffers from a tonal clash and a lot of plot holes, it almost saves itself by having a unique ending. Throughout the film, Dr. Cotter learns that in order to get rid of the dark spirit that has taken over her, she either has to kill someone or commit suicide. She goes to face the monster, and she thinks she wins, but instead, the spirit tricked her, and she ends up passing the spirit on to the next person.
In most horror movies, the villain either gets beaten or killed by the heroes, but “Smile” manages to flip the trope on its head, and have its killer be victorious. It was a gutsy ending that works well with a nice ending shot from the director.
Overall, “Smile” is a cliché horror movie with forgettable and bland characters, but it adds just enough to make the movie feel fun.
Rating: 2.5/5
