SMILE (2022) - Movie Review

Director: Parker Finn
Starring: Sosie Bacon, Jessie T. Usher, Kyle Gallner, Kal Penn, Rob Morgan,
Genre: Horror
Writer: Parker Finn
Runtime: 115 min
Rated: R for strong violent content and grisly images, and language
Buy This Movie: Blu-ray (Amazon), DVD (Amazon), 4K Ultra HD (Amazon), Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV

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Synopsis:

After witnessing a bizarre, traumatic incident involving a patient, Dr. Rose Cotter (Sosie Bacon) starts experiencing frightening occurrences that she can't explain. As an overwhelming terror begins taking over her life, Rose must confront her troubling past in order to survive and escape her horrifying new reality.

Review:

The horror film "Smile" marked the feature writing/directing debut of Parker Finn, based on his own 2020 short film "Laura Hasn't Slept". As you may already know, the film was wildly successful when it was released in 2022, and it has already spawned a sequel. While "Smile" might become a long-running horror franchise that will go on for God knows how many installments, is it really worth all that hype ?

Sosie Bacon, daughter of veteran actors Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick, stars as dedicated therapist Rose Cotter, who deals with her own trauma caused by a family tragedy by throwing herself into her work at an emergency hospital. Her fragile life's balance is disturbed when a patient commits suicide right in front of her, with a big grin on her face, no less. After that, Rose begins to experience strange and disturbing visions that involve people with uncanny smiles that are either hallucinations, or supernatural attacks by an insidious entity. Spoiler: it's the latter.

Finn does a great job of mixing genre scares with deeper themes that pertain to trauma, grief, guilt, and their psychologically scarring effects. The film's first half is filled with mystery and anxiety-inducing tension. Sosie Bacon gives a tour-de-force performance that escalates in intensity as we witness her character's descent into madness. The score and sound design also add tremendously to the unsettling atmosphere. Unfortunately all that effort doesn't amount to much once the film turns into a run-of-the-mill possession story.

I really wish the movie was about something more interesting than just demons and viral curses, familiar ground already covered by much better films like "Fallen", "The Ring" and "It Follows". As "Smile" approaches its final act, it enters a more traditional genre groove, resorting to horror tropes like the one where the protagonist tracks down a survivor who offers crucial insight. The more we learn about this entity, the more the movie loses all suspense, which is why the second half is where my interest started to dip.

In the end "Smile" isn't all that original, but it's well-executed and well-acted. It's also not as gory as I expected, which is a big plus, but it does overuse jump scares. Lots of well crafted tension and disturbing imagery will satisfy genre fans, but it's far from the game-changer it hopes to be.

SCORE: 7/10