Smile is a nasty, effective film that takes the hip “horror can be a metaphor for trauma” trope and turns it on its head. Many smaller, more independently-minded films such as The Night House and Relic see supernatural forces as a way for the protagonist to work through their shit, proverbially speaking, whether it’s the death of a loved one or a difficult childhood. In his feature debut, Parker Finn broadens the trope’s appeal by making a red-blooded crowd-pleaser, the sort where the audience members yell at the screen, or in my case, loudly announce they’re so scared they have to leave the auditorium.
Sosie Bacon (the daughter of Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick) is well-cast as Rose, a hospital psychiatrist who cares about her patients to a fault. When we first meet her, every hair is in place and she is smartly dressed, an image of quiet professionalism. Shortly after Rose meets a new patient named Laura (Caitlin Stasey), Laura also stabs herself in the throat with a broken piece of porcelain, all while smiling and Rose watches aghast. Strange things happen to Rose after Laura’s death, as they must: she imagines people who are not really there, and she has significant gaps in her memory. Rose’s fiancé Trevor (Jessie T. Usher) quickly loses patience, so Rose starts digging and realizes Laura’s death connects to a string of gruesome suicides, as if a supernatural force imprints on anyone who bears witness to these deaths.
Finn proves to have a shrewd understanding of tension and payoff. Nothing about his film is original, right down to the plot and jump-scares, and yet he dispenses gotcha moments with gleeful precision. There is an early scene where Rose listens to the recording of her session with Laura, and Finn creates just enough comfort with the rhythm of the edit so that the payoff can surprise even hardened fans. On top of that, and what makes Smile so much fun, is Finn’s penchant for grotesque imagery. The respectable sheen of the opening act is bait-and-switch, insofar this is not the sort of film where you expect someone to literally rip their face off (more than once).
Finn also includes enough detail about Rose’s relationships, so that a family drama dovetails nicely with her eroding sanity. Gillian Zinser plays Rose’s sister Holly, who is kind of obnoxious, but uses her ordinary life as a cudgel against a dark past she and Rose quietly share. Whereas “elevated” horror films do not make the metaphor explicit, Smile is up-front and literal about how the monster feeds off trauma. This leads to a climatic showdown between Rose and a supernatural force, one that obliterates any sense of subtext. That is an observation, not a criticism, because Finn has another trick up his sleeve: he does not use his premise to make his film about Rose’s healing. In fact, he reveals himself as more a genre purist, one who perhaps rolls his eyes as those who attempt to “elevate” the genre.
Speaking of elevated horror, while there will be no push for Smile to win awards like there was for Hereditary, Finn gets effective performances thanks largely to smart casting. Robin Weigert plays Rose’s therapist, someone whose professionalism serves as a barometer for how much we should worry about Rose. Although he is only in one scene, Rob Morgan plays a terrified prisoner who may hold the key to breaking the cycle of suicides. But this is Bacon’s film, and she veers from critical thinker to a frayed victim with ease. Crucially, the nature of this supernatural force means that any actor could have chance to freak us out, since we are never sure whether we are seeing a person or Rose’s crucial hallucination, all of whom grin with a mix of bloodlust and menace.
Since the aforementioned plot is familiar, it is best not to ask a lot of questions about Smile. Even Rose’s cop ex-boyfriend Joel (Kyle Gallner) does not serve as much of an exposition tool, partially because the film falls apart the more you think about it. In fact, once you see it you should be able to figure out a simpler way to “break the cycle,” and not just because a similar Denzel Washington thriller from the 1990s had the same idea. To its credit and our delight, Smiles’s modest ambition will make audiences scream and giggle. Despite the ongoing horror resurgence, it remains a rare pleasure to see a film that expertly manipulates us from its first shot until its inevitable, disturbing end.
Photo courtesy of Paramount Pictures
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