[REVIEW] Smile
Have you ever wondered what it’s like to see a horror movie, alone, while PMS-ing? On top of that, you aren’t entirely in the right headspace, due to mental health and other stressors. I had the privilege of doing just that tonight and let me tell you, it was a doozy. I chose to take myself out to a movie since I hadn’t seen one in theaters for a while. I heard a lot of rumblings about Smile and how it was actually quite good, despite my poor, early judgement based on the trailer.
Going into the film, I had spoken to someone who told me there happened to be a lot of triggers for people in this movie. I tried to talk myself out of going, but I’m glad I went. The movie knocked it out of the park in many ways, but mostly its use of sound and music. The way I felt sitting in that theater was like nothing I had experienced since I saw Midsommar alone in theaters.
Smile centers around therapist Dr. Rose Cotter (Sosie Bacon), who works for an emergency mental health hospital. She has a very traumatic encounter with a young woman who is brought in that day. The woman tells her about an entity she is seeing that supposedly shows her people and in these visions, they’re always smiling. As the session continues, Rose tries to assist the woman but she is met with pushback because the woman feels no one is understanding her problem. The scene escalates and the young woman kills herself in front of Dr. Cotter.
As Dr. Cotter finishes her traumatic day, she starts to become more and more paranoid and tense herself. Within a few days of the patient’s suicide, Rose begins to miss sleep and starts becoming very erratic. The people around her are concerned for her well being. We learn that the smiling ‘thing’ has now attached itself to Rose, as she was the only witness of her patient’s horrific death. As time goes on, almost no one believes her when she mentions what is really happening, they all gaslight her into thinking she is just ‘crazy’. This is one of the many types of triggers one could have when viewing this. Mental illness is serious and this movie truly shows us that.
The cold open for this film, right off the bat is intense and full of power. As I mentioned, the sound editing and the music really adds an unnerving tone to the whole film. I’m sure it felt even more immersive because I saw it in Dolby, with almost no one else in the theater. I felt every move, scare and tense moment. Speaking of scares, we tend to have a lot of issues in the horror world with ‘jump scares’. This movie did have a lot of them, but they did not feel cheap in any way. All of the scenes where a loud noise would happen, or a person would appear were very relevant to the story and the scene they were happening in.
When it comes to the cast, Sosie Bacon killed it as Dr. Rose Cotter. She was able to truly show the audience so many different emotions throughout the film. I feel like we saw every single side of her character. Kyle Gallner who plays Joel in the film was the perfect match for Sosie in that their on-screen chemistry was brilliant. I felt like they worked well together, even if he wasn’t in the movie quite as much.
Seeing this movie alone and in theaters was really hard because there are a lot of heavy topics in it, including: death, suicide, self harm, gaslighting, animal death, a flashing title card and more. Definitely go into this movie with a good headspace and I’d say if you’re not quite there, bring a friend. It was an excellent horror film, but it also tore at me mentally. I was on edge throughout the movie and even on the drive home. It’s definitely going to be one of those that sticks with you for a long time. What a great film done by Parker Finn and Paramount Pictures.