After witnessing a bizarre, traumatic incident involving a patient, Dr. Rose Cotter starts experiencing frightening occurrences that she can’t explain. Rose must confront her troubling past to survive and escape her horrifying new reality.
Director Parker Finn must have been heavily influenced by David Robert Mitchell’s 2014 indie smash hit, “It Follows,” because “Smile,” his feature film directorial debut, pays homage to that movie in almost every way. He plays with themes about the fragility of the human mind, how strong our minds genuinely are, and how they can shape our lives, not always for the better. He also introduces supernatural elements and doesn’t explain the film’s central antagonist, a faceless entity who can transfer between bodies and take over whomever it wishes. For the most part, we are left in the dark, and I think that works better as a backstory can sometimes convolute matters and take away from the creature’s mystery.
Therapist Rose Cotter (Sosie Bacon) works at a large hospital in New Jersey. When a young woman named Laura (Caitlin Stasey) is admitted to her ward, screaming and terrified of something she says is following her, she agrees to meet with her. Trying to understand exactly what’s scaring her, Laura explains that she witnessed a teacher at her university kill himself right in front of her, and ever since, she sees people smiling at her all the time. Not friendly, happy smiles, but something darker, more sinister, and evil. She then starts screaming again, claiming that the thing is in the room with her, and as quickly as it began, she immediately stops, accompanied by a chilling and menacing smile. She then proceeds to kill herself, and even after death, the smile remains.
Rose is told by her boss Dr. Morgan Desai (Kal Penn), that she needs to take time off and cannot interact with other patients because of her traumatic experience, and begrudgingly, she agrees. But slowly, she begins to witness what Laura described to her; disturbing and horrific smiles on strangers’ faces. When she tries to confide in her fiancé Trevor (Jessie T. Usher), explaining that what happened to her patient is now happening to her, he doesn’t believe her, convinced she is losing her mind. She teams up with Joel (Kyle Gallner), a detective working on Laura’s case and who also happens to be her ex, and together they discover a troubling pattern of suicide that goes back years, but with her visions becoming increasingly more frightening, she gradually begins to question her sanity, unable to tell if what she is experiencing is in her mind or for real. Now she must separate her imagination from reality before she too succumbs to taking her own life.
Going into the press screening, I had only seen the trailer and decided not to read anything about the film beforehand. I was glad I did because the movie has some genuinely frightening moments. You are never quite sure if Rose’s experiences are in her head or happening in real life, and when a filmmaker can put an audience in that precarious situation, unable to know what’s real and what’s not, it makes for a scary good time. Here, the “thing” is passed on through trauma, much like the thing in “It Follows,” which was passed on through sex but the only person who can see it is the person suffering from the most recent traumatic experience, and eventually they will pass it onto the next person and so it goes. “It Follows” told audiences that to stop the thing from coming after you, you had to have sex with another person, thereby passing it on to them. A similar scenario is presented here but with increasingly dire consequences.
“Smile” is an effectively creepy horror film with some crackerjack scares and creative kills, but sadly, it collapses under the weight of a generic and stereotypical denouement that befalls many horror films. If the movie makes money, Paramount would want to leave the door open for a sequel; I just wish sometimes the powers-that-be could see past the almighty dollar sign and let their filmmakers make the best possible film. This one criticism aside, if you love horror movies, “Smile” will most certainly make you grin from ear to ear, or, dare I say it, smile.
Now available on Digital HD and on 4K Ultra HD, Blu-ray™, & DVD December 13th
