"Smile-A Movie Review by Sey"

Sey
Nov 16, 2022
4 min read

Do you enjoy a good jump-scare? Do you find people running from danger funny? Are you a horror movie person? If you answered yes to any of those questions then Parker Finn's movie, Smile, is #TheMove for you. This horror is one that explores everyone's inner demons.

Smile opens with Dr. Rose Cotter, portrayed by Sosie Bacon, being visited by one of her patients-Laura Weaver (Caitlin Stasey). Laura has been visiting Dr. Cotter for awhile now, so Rose had no reason to be alarmed. However, this particular visit was different. Laura was very panicked and convinced some evil entity was out to get her. Her sporadic behavior not only frightened Dr. Cotter, but it caused her to start calling out for help. Before they could continue conversation, Laura is flung out of her seat and pushed up against the wall before taking on a blank look and gaining a creepy grin. The camera shifts from a few jarring angles before finally focusing on Laura holding a shard of a broken vase that she uses to kill herself in front of Dr. Cotter.

After the event, Dr. Cotter is expectedly shaken, but not just from witnessing a suicide. She had expressed numerous times to her superior Dr. Morgan Desai, Kal Penn, that Laura had been progressing in their sessions. She said that before this incident, Laura had not been showing signs of being suicidal. Despite her concerns, Rose is brushed off and told to go back to work. Rose arrived home later that evening and immediately started hearing things while in the house. She's startled by her fiance, Jessie T. Usher Jr., and drops a glass. This is only the beginning of her madness. Rose really finds herself in a crazy situation when she arrives to work and a familiar patient, Jack Sochet, looks at her and says she is going to die. He continues to repeat it which terrifies Rose. She screams and calls to have him restrained only to notice in a couple minutes the same patient is now the one screaming. Later, she is called into Dr. Desai's office where he informs her the patient had done nothing wrong. He had been relaxing. Dr. Desai has a long talk about hallucinations and how work can pile up on people. He advises Rose to take some time off to get into her right mind. Little did he know, Rose's troubles were just beginning.

Rose continued to have a series of hallucinations and panic attacks that resulted in her holding her fiance at knife point, gifting her nephew with a dead cat, and more. It seems to everyone else she's truly lost it. But, Rose knows better. She investigates her patient's death and discovers that Laura had witnessed a suicide days before taking her own life. When Rose interviews the professor's wife she learns that he was also having hallucinations. The dead professor would concern his wife and draw creepy images of a demon he swore he was seeing. Upon hearing this, Rose knows that the professor was experiencing the same thing as her and Laura. Her digging was paying off, but she was still missing something.

Rose teams up with her ex and current police officer Joel, Kyle Gallner, for answers. The two discover that the professor Rose had been looking into also witnessed someone commit suicide before he took his own life. Suddenly, Rose discovers a pattern and embarks on a journey to free herself of this curse. She and her ex work together to find out what she can do, if anything. Upon following the pattern of 20 or so suicides, one man-Rob Morgan-who witnessed a suicide survived. He was the only man that survived. Rose and her ex went to visit him and he agreed to tell her how to live if her ex left the room. The man told Rose the key to surviving. She became so overwhelmed she accidentally revealed that she currently had the curse. The man lost it and Rose's reality set in.

She began to distance herself to face her demons all on her own. For six days she constantly felt crazy and unhinged. Her fiance had started to treat her different in addition to her coworkers and family. The only ally she had was Joel and she didn't want to hurt him or pass the curse on. She went back to her childhood home and finally came face to face with her own demons. It was a battle that left viewers shouting in the theaters!

I'm personally not a big horror movie buff, but I've still managed to sit through a few. Smile was fricking terrifying! There were some serious jump scares and if you have a fear of burglars or someone creeping in your home it played on those elements as well. Overall, I would say the execution was pretty good despite the plot being a recycled idea. The transformation of something as bright as a smile into a kill sign is pretty dark though. I found that interesting. Also, if one wanted to add depth to the movie, they could interpret the physical demon as well as the trauma displayed on screen to represent everyone's own demons and trauma we've faced in reality.

Overall, I would rate this movie a 7.5/10. Rotten Tomatoes gives it a 7.9 on the tomatometer. There are some slow moments and I did not enjoy physically screaming in the theater a few times, but it's definitely a good watch. Be sure to make Smile your next #Move before the year is over!