148) Smile (2022)

"It's smiling at me. But not a friendly smile. It's the worst smile I've ever seen in my life."

Director

Parker Finn

Cast

Sosie Bacon - Rose Cotter
Kyle Gallner - Joel

Jessie T. Usher - Trevor

Caitlin Stasey - Laura Weaver

Kal Penn - Dr. Morgan Desai

Robin Weigert - Dr. Madeline Northcott

(Spoilers ahead)

I have to admit that when it comes to modern mainstream horror movies, I tend to gloss over a lot of them. The only urge I have to check them out is for this blog's sake. Some horror films released in the last 10 years, other than sequels and reboots, such as "Get Out," "Hereditary," "Midsommar," "Split," "Happy Death Day" to drop a few titles, have grabbed my attention, and were rather decent horror flicks.

When the trailer for the 2022 psychological horror film "Smile" dropped, I wasn't impressed. It seemed like another standard horror flick with the same old shock elements and premises I've seen over and over again. It included a psychiatric ward, someone's traumatic experience (I admit those are often relatable), and an evil otherworldly entity. Evil entities suck! Traumatic experiences also suck. So, when the two are mixed together, it's supposed to make for a nasty experience.

The trailer left me with the impression that the movie was more about jump scares, hideous and horrific visuals, and a story that takes itself too seriously.

In this movie, Sosie Bacon, the daughter of actor Kevin Bacon (I didn't know that until after watching "Smile") plays psychiatric therapist Dr. Rose Cotter.

The story starts with Cotter meeting with a disturbed graduate student named Laura (Caitlin Stasey) who witnessed her college professor kill himself in a truly brutal manner. 

Laura claims she has been seeing an entity that takes the form of people she knows as well as completely strangers. But each time she sees the entity in the form of a person, they always have a sinister smile plastered on their face. And they tell her she's going to die.

During the consultation, Laura breaks down screaming at an invisible presence in the room before collapsing to the floor. 

After Cotter rushes to an emergency phone for help, she turns back around to see Laura standing with an evil grin and holding a shard of a broken vase that shattered on the floor. 

Cotter witnesses Laura cut her own throat with that shard from ear to ear before falling dead. 

The incident weighs heavily on Cotter, who soon begins experience strange incidents and sees people grinning sinisterly at her. Sinister grins are spooky, I guess. As these experiences start becoming more and more severe, Cotter begins questioning her sanity.

Sosie Bacon as Rose Cotter in 2022's "Smile."

She starts seeing her old therapist, Dr. Madeline Northcott (Robin Weigert) who thinks her turmoil stems from the stress of her work, witnessing Laura's suicide, and the unhealed wounds from childhood. 

During her youth, Cotter was alone when she saw her abusive, mentally ill mother slowly die from an overdose. 

She starts investigating these phenomena which leads her to other people who have experienced the same sort of things and have ultimately died. 

Among the individuals she speaks with is the widow of the professor who Laura saw take his life. 

Her hallucinations continue to grow more intense. While her fiancé Trevor (Jessie T. Usher) along with her sister think she's merely having a mental breakdown inherited from her mother, and offer no help, Cotter turns to her ex-boyfriend cop, Joel (Kyle Gallner), for help.

He tries to assist as best he can. Cotter figures out that this entity feeds on personal trauma and is passed onto other victims when they witness it kill someone under the appearance of suicide. 

The lines of reality and mental instability become blurred. Soon, Cotter realizes how she must face this otherworldly demon alone in a place where no one can find her so she cannot pass it onto someone else. 

So, did the movie exceed my poor expectations? Not really. It was, for the most part, what I initially thought it would be. 

"Smile" is another paranormal/psychological daisy chain horror story similar to films like "The Ring" (2002) or the "Saw" movies, albeit "Saw" is a psychological horror film rather than a paranormal one. Still, it's the same principle.  

In these sorts of movies, the only way for the main character to dispel or overcome the evil or curse haunting them is to pass it on to someone else. To be rid of evil, they have to commit evil. It's a terrible premise. No one comes out any better. Events go from bad to worse, and then the story is over. It's not really a resolution. It's just an ending. 

It also has all the standard formulaic modern horror elements. There's a protagonist already dealing with past ghosts (figurative speaking) that they're still haunted by decades later. That trauma has them already worn down to some degree. There's the edge-of-your-seat race against the clock. It's similar to the seven days until death as seen in the film "The Ring." In "Smile" Cotter figures out she has about a week to until she dies based on the fate of everyone else who dealt with this thing before her.

Again, it's hard to tell what's real and what's delusion. 

They main character investigates the situation, so the audience can figure out the scenario along with the protagonist. 

Jack Sochet as patient Carl Renken.

The unstoppable evil, in some form or another, takes control and the protagonist is powerless against it. No matter how much knowledge they acquire, they're only option is to succumb to the evil or commit an evil act to appease the terrible thing haunting them. No matter what, their only resolution is evil. There's nothing heroic. There's nothing relatable. They're stuck against their will with fear and trouble, and goodness is unobtainable.

Though Cotter figures out a few things about what's going on, she doesn't succeed in anything. Her fate is no different than those before her. And it all ends on a cliffhanger that leaves room for a potential sequel. I'm not surprised. 

Having stated all that, it goes without saying that the story is rather predictable with its standard dose of grotesqueries and jump scares. 

Aside from some intrigue and a few frights, I found this story dull and unoriginal. 

It tries to leave the audience with a shocking memorable scene or two that'll stick in their collective memory, likely be talked about for ages to come. That scene takes place when the entity rips its face off screaming at the end. 

While "Smile" does have some draw which kept me interested until the end, along with some barely enough frightening elements, it's just another story full of old, overplayed tropes seen several times before in several other modern horror films. It takes itself seriously but doesn't seem to try anything new. Sadly, I didn't walk away smiling.