Smile

• Written and Directed by Parker Finn (Feature Directorial Debut)
• September 22, 2022 (Fantastic Fest) / September 30, 2022 (US)
• Based on the 2020 short film Laura Hasn’t Slept (waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay better title) written, directed, and co-produced by Parker Finn

After witnessing the bizarre suicide of a patient, a therapist goes through increasingly bizarre experiences alluding to a supernatural cause behind it all.

The premise for Smile struck me as rather promising. At least from the commercials. Who doesn’t find a menacing smile, well, menacing? Throw in the supernatural and you should have an easy winner. Sadly while not terrible I do not feel it lived up to the potential inherent in the concept.

Our main character Rose Cotter (Sosie Bacon), aside from dealing with the smiling people is also dealing with the trauma of her mother’s suicide years prior. That is nothing unusual for a therapist or a member of the general population to be handling since it is an unfortunate human experience, but Rose has some real baggage from the event. That baggage is well known to all around her.

Given that element it seems a little astounding that individuals are confused why Rose would be bothered by a woman killing themselves right in front of her. Admittedly she only knew the patient for about 10 minutes but even without the suicide of her own mother that’s a pretty traumatic event for ANYBODY. Are her friends and coworkers devoid of basic humanity? The world may never know…

For someone that deals with the mental health of patients Rose is pretty messed up and I’m not exactly sure how she is able to still treat them. She does not have minor issues but ones from the POV of a viewer that make her look unfit to aid others. Admittedly I’m not a psychologist or a psychiatrist or a therapist but if you got heavy emotional baggage you might not be the one to help others and deal with their problems.

I can MAYBE understand her sister Holly (Gillian Zinser) not being supportive all things considered but her fiancé Trevor (Jessie T. Usher) can’t even humor her? He turns on her pretty quickly but is still willing to stay under the same roof even though he believes she inherited her mother’s insanity and is potentially dangerous. Huh?

Not that her sister Holly and brother-in-law are much better. They pretty much start out as insensitive douchebags. And that gives you a pretty good idea of what those around here are like. I find it reminiscent of The Invisible Man reboot a few years ago. Much like here, the main character’s presumed support network disintegrated when they were needed. In neither case was that weak nature a point of the narrative.

Nobody around Rose seems to really care about her. I understand some reactions but as a general rule they are not good people and they do not really care about her. The only person that actually seems to care about her is the police detective Joel (Kyle Gallner) who she’s merely friends with and at one point dated that apparently still carries a torch for her. They don’t need to believe that she’s actually seeing a spirit and that it’s tormenting her or any of that. But they don’t seem to be looking out for her or caring for her. She is a nuisance and they cut her off.

What is with all these characters being utterly unsupportive of her? She seems to make a note of it about how she pushed away Joel who clearly will do anything for her even if he may not necessarily think it’s a good idea. He’s supportive and still has feelings for her. That’s in contrast to her sister and her fiancé. But beyond that brief moment we get squat.

Smile is more about Rose’s trauma than dealing with an evil entity. And I guess given the finale the message is that your trauma will ultimately destroy you and harm others. Or that it will do that if you don’t deal with it quickly. I’m not sure. I may be splitting hairs a bit too much but what was going on was more about the character and discussing her life than it was about the evil entity. The entity needs to be the main thing with the other stuff being secondary yet significant if you wish to discuss that. Story first. Message second.

There are some scares here but not too many. There are more shocks than anything that’ll frighten you. And I am rather impressed with some of the visuals. There is plenty that can only be accomplished with CGI yet it’s not there for the cool aspect but rather to expand upon the horror elements within the film.

In this fictional world, the entity can only survive by generating trauma and moving from body to body. Rose realizes that the only way to stop it is to confront her trauma. It makes perfect sense and I think if they had gone with that route it would have worked perfectly but they do a bit of a switcheroo at the end and give it a victim to witness to give it trauma to latch on to. And that works too but not nearly as well as Rose engaging in some supernatural therapy.

Smile wasn’t bad but not great. And my issues stem largely from the supporting cast of characters and less from my lack of real scares. It’s not a bad movie, but not as good as it could be.