Horror movies are having a good year. Here comes Smile, a film that follows every convention of the genre, but does it better, smarter, than most. It’s got issues, but in a strong year, it still resides within the Top Ten chillers so far.
Rose (Sosie Bacon), is a dedicated clinical psychiatrist who’s called into work for an emergency involving a patient (Caitlin Stasey) in distress. The patient, clearly off her rocker, claims that she’s being followed by some kind of “entity”. We will soon learn that she began seeing/feeling this whatever it is after witnessing a suicide. And then she stands perfectly still in the room with Rose and freezes into the absolute creepiest, most sinister smile, before killing herself right in front of Rose.
The manner in which she does herself in is graphic and spooky and a great way to accelerate the beginning of a film. Alas, Smile is unable to keep up that sequence for the entire run of the film, as it marches toward its inevitable conclusion.
Bacon does a pro job at carrying the film, always at its center. Writer/Director Parker Finn wants to say something worthwhile about trauma, and sometimes his best intentions come through. Rose, it turns out has not only experienced childhood trauma (assuming that’s why she became a psychiatrist) but has now possibly gotten the whatever it is from the patient she saw. After all, the tag line for the movie is “once you see it, it’s too late.”
Finn goes to the “sike, she was just dreaming this part” well a couple times too many, in his effort to show us how haunted Rose is, but it only serves to dilute the scares for the viewer. These are minor quibbles for a spooky flick at this level, but they keep Smile from reaching the heights of, say, Saloum or Barbarian.
Smile is in theaters | Rated R (gore, suicide) | 3 out of 4 stars
