Courtesy of Paramount Pictures
As proven by everything from The Man Who Laughs and Joker to It, American Horror Story and The Black Phone, there are few things creepier than a toothy, enthusiastic-to-the-point-of-derangement grin. Smile takes that idea to its extreme, building an entire horror film around an ear-to-ear smirk that affixes itself to people’s faces right before homicidal nastiness occurs. As far as signature sights go, it’s a reliably unnerving one, and it—along with a healthy dose of cheese and The Ring-by-way-of-It Follows derivation—do much to make writer/director Parker Finn’s feature debut the sort of entertainingly dim, unoriginal and shock tactic-loving studio effort that’s catnip for teens venturing out to the multiplex with friends on a Friday night.
Making “turn that frown upside down” literal via a litany of show-off shots in which the camera rotates and loop-de-loops in order to flip the action, Smile is a tale about the unholy hell wrought—in the mind, and in the real world—from witnessing trauma. For Dr. Rose Cotter (Sosie Bacon), a therapist who treats psychiatric patients at a New Jersey hospital, the painful incident that shaped her life was the suicidal death of her boozing, pill-popping mother, which she observed as a child and propelled her on her medical path. Rose is a calm and caring physician who tells her patients that the things they’re seeing don’t exist and can’t hurt them. While that may be true about manic Carl (Jack Sochet), who mutters standard-issue spooky stuff about how “We’re all going to die,” it’s less accurate when it comes to Laura Weaver (Caitlin Stasey), a college student who shows up in Rose’s admittance room with a wild story to tell.
[Minor Spoilers Follow]