Smile will hit theaters on Sept. 30, 2022.
“Smile though your heart is aching; smile even though it’s breaking.” Those well-meaning words of comfort couldn’t sound more sinister once you’ve seen Smile, a supernatural psychological horror entry that, while it doesn’t reinvent the wheel, still manages to stoke tension every time anyone so much as smirks.
This ruthlessly effective, anxiety-inducing nightmare that tells the horrifying story of Dr. Rose Cotter (Sosie Bacon), a therapist who finds her whole world turned upside down as she begins to unravel beneath the stigma of mental health.Her newest patient is a young girl who witnessed the suicide of her college professor, and when their first session takes a bizarre, traumatic turn, it looks as though Cotter is now seeing the very hallucinations that her patient reported – a sinister smiling face that appears throughout their daily lives and haunts them with unsettling visions.
If the premise sounds familiar, that’s because it’s been done many, many times before. It’s easy to draw comparisons to It Follows, as well as The Ring and The Grudge. But where these movies seem to have inspired Smile, director Parker Finn uses our knowledge of their well-worn tropes to make something a little different.That’s not to say that Smile is a wholly original film – it isn’t. But it does veer off in an interesting new direction.
Finn establishes his creepy, off-kilter view of the world almost instantly with twisting camerawork that sets a disorienting tone. Sure, it’s not the most subtle of metaphors – at times, Cotter’s world is turned literally upside down with almost stomach-churning inverted landscape shots. But this neat trick that’s seemingly borrowed from the likes of Hereditary instantly puts us on edge and makes us much more empathetic to Cotter’s unraveling mental state as a result.
Equally, the jump scares start off as a simple means of keeping us on our toes, but slowly build toward something greater. They soon come thick and fast, with plenty of feigns and fake-outs to throw us off. And that’s when you begin to realize that the almost laughable frequency of these moments is doing something else entirely. It’s setting the unnerving stage with a creeping paranoia that keeps us wondering just what’s around every corner.
The scares themselves are quite tame by comparison, but that doesn’t matter.The whole point is to keep us tense throughout the entire film as you second-guess where the next jump scare is coming from… and the really fun part is that you’ll rarely get it right.
Finn absolutely nails the creeping dread of a mental health professional who knows she won’t be taken seriously.
These interesting little touches make Smile much more than a cheap scare. Instead, it revels in its ability to make you squirm. The very bloody and visceral nature of the deaths is offset by the weird, ethereal emptiness of its victims’ faces. Finn absolutely nails the creeping dread of a mental health professional who knows she won’t be taken seriously and explores the stigma of depression and anxiety as Cotter fights an uphill battle with those around her.
Sosie Bacon is an absolute thrill to watch as the ever-deteriorating Dr. Cotter, with an incredible performance that gets to the heart of mental health anxiety while grounding the sheer hysterics of being pursued by a supernatural entity. Jessie T. Usher, meanwhile, is all-too-believable as Trevor, Rose’s new boyfriend who thinks she’s going crazy. A brief appearance from Rob Morgan is brilliantly paced as he transforms from rational to utterly terrified in the blink of an eye.
On the surface, Smile’s premise is a simple one, but there’s a lot more weight to it than initially meets the eye. Sure, it only scratches the surface when it comes to exploring complex issues of mental health stigma. But Bacon wears the weariness of a well-meaning therapist in those early scenes… and as her own sanity begins to unravel, we experience the true horror of a woman who knows what all this means. An unnerving soundtrack from Cristobal Tapia de Veer helps keep us on the edge of our seats with unexpected turns that heighten our anxiety to almost unbearable levels.
Smile may borrow heavily from other horror films, but it certainly brings something unique to the table, and I’m not just talking about that creepy smile. Finn knows the expected horror tropes and uses them against us, building a crippling unease that heightens what would be fairly unambitious jump scares with skin-crawling efficiency. His interesting use of light and sound ratchets up tension throughout, while jump scares combined with smash cuts will leave you wondering what exactly just happened… in a good way. Throw in an impeccable central performance from Bacon and Smile gives us the creepy, horrifying tale of a woman coming undone in the face of supernatural horror.
And remember – Smile. What’s the use of crying?
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