Out in September of 2022, “Smile” will become one of the scariest horror movies of the year right off. From Parker Finn, written and directed, this invitation lures an audience into a terrifying psychological journey that really taps into deep-rooted fears. With the mashup of grotesque visuals, a frightening soundscape, and outstanding performances, there lies in “Smile” one of the many latest horror movies that’s definitely etched into the heads of the viewers after watching. So, let’s actually see how this creepy thriller unfolds, from its plot, cast, themes, and importance.
Plot Summary
The plot of “Smile” centers around Dr. Rose Cotter as a psychiatric ward psychiatrist played excellently by Sosie Bacon. Rose is accustomed to treating traumatized patients. However, her world turns into a nightmare when a young woman named Laura Weaver (Caitlin Stasey) comes under her care. Laura is a PhD student and hysterical, alleging that something—some supernatural entity—is haunting her since she witnessed a violent suicide days prior. She states that this being manifests in the form of human beings, who weirdly smile at her in sick and unnatural ways.
It throws her into a nightmare before fully enlightening her as to Laura’s delusions, forcing her to watch in horror as Laura goes on to commit suicide right before her with a hideous grin on her face. And these tragedies unleash a chain reaction almost before one could pick up the pieces. Short while later, weird events start staring Rose in her face just as Laura has also described them. She notices people grinning at her as she tries to regain her distorted reality, questioning to herself how sane she is. In this movie, the spiraling down by Rose becomes the central part of it, seeing her desperately try to trace up the origin of the evil force that is pursuing her.
With her digging deeper into the mystery, she comes to realize that the curse is passed on through the witnesses of violent suicides. After a person experiences the entity, it’s like a ticking time bomb; within a week, they either take their own life or kill someone else, thus continuing the curse. Time is running out for Rose to break the cycle as she also fights against her traumatic past and worsening supernatural events that blur reality and hallucination.
Themes and Symbolism
“Smile” succeeds magnificently at harvesting psychological horror with rich thematic elements. The film does not score as a pretty smile with jump scares and eerie grins but goes deep into themes of mental illness, trauma, and human psychology. The smile, in this case, is an extremely ironic symbol hauntingly. Most of the time, it refers to warmth or friendliness, but in this movie, it was twisted into a menacing and weaponized expression of something in the everyday as scary to the spectator. The unnerving grin becomes the foreboding of death, anxiety, and loss of control.
The film reveals the manner in which trauma can be so perceived as a curse, which menaces a person in varied situations that may be passed on or inflicted upon others. But it isn’t just about survival and testing of her survival capabilities; it is also the coming to terms with unresolved issues born of childhood traumas. Her back-story, mysterious and ambiguous circumstances surrounding the death of her mother, constitutes an important raison d’être for her vulnerability to the entity. So it wonderfully pans out as a metaphor, trauma being a curse that haunts and devours.
Another dominant undercurrent in the movie is the theme that mental illness is very easy to stereotype and misconstrue. Even her colleagues and even her fiancé, Trevor played by Jessie T. Usher, begin to wonder if she were to lose her mind as the narrative evolves into a series of paranoid sequences from Rose. The parasitic relationship between the ‘visitant’ and Rose feeds on the isolation she starts to feel as she fights the battle alone. The less she can speak about her experiences, the fewer people believe her, and the impossibility reflects how most sufferers with mental illness experience isolation because they seem to be misunderstood or dismissed.
Cast and Performances
Sosie Bacon plays the main role of Rose Cotter in the film, and her performance forges an emotional anchor to this dread descent. Bacon is great at portraying raw and compelling fear, anxiety, and confusion, making her stand out in the horror genre. She conveys a wide range of emotions, mainly the slow unraveling of her character’s mind, which keeps viewers hooked from start to finish.
Jessie T. Usher is Trevor, Rose’s fiancé, who at first is supportive but later backs off as her behavior goes off the deep end. His role focuses on the theme of alienation in that even people closest to Rose begin pulling away from her, not being able or wanting to understand what she’s going through.
Character Kyle Gallner plays the role of Joel, a detective and a former boyfriend of Rose, one of the few who actually believe what she is saying. His character is much-needed to be paired with this film, and Gallner brings depth to the grounded, compassionate element of the movie.
Other stars are: Robin Weigert as Dr. Madeline Northcott and Kal Penn as Dr. Morgan Desai, the supervisor of Rose. These two characters then are obstacles for Rose to explore. They form one aspect of the rational world that does not believe in supernatural events as forms of mental illness.
Direction and Cinematography
Director Parker Finn makes his feature film debut in “Smile,” and his capacity to build tension and dread is impressive. The film, under Finn’s direction, tends towards psychological horror over gore, although there are scenes sufficiently gruesome. Overall the tension builds slowly in the movie, matched by some pretty unsettling sound design and disturbing camera angles.
Credit is due, however, to cinematographer Charlie Sarroff for the unwholesome depiction of “Smile.” Most shots of the actors captured their faces close up, drawing attention to their expressions and the ever-present, haunting smiles which are a prime feature of the movie. The dark, shadowy lighting only adds to the claustrophobic feel of the movie, keeping the viewer trapped within the same paranoid world as Rose.
The visual form of the entity is never defined explicitly but makes for a very frightening thing. The film relies on vagueness and, in this way, much of the fear remains in one’s mind, thus creating more intense fear. Well, there is no stop to those reflections, distorted visions, and dream sequences so that at some point it becomes really difficult to tell what is real and what’s not.
Release and Reception
“Smile” opened theatrically on September 30, 2022, and was distributed by Paramount Pictures. The movie was initially intended to be available for streaming on Paramount+ but after a good positive response in early showings, the film’s creators decided on an widest theatrical release possible. It’s a good thing the creators had changed their mind because the film performed amazingly well at the box office fetching more than $216 million worldwide on a small budget of just $17 million.
Mixed reviews with caution: From a critical perspective, the film was mixed, with some elaborating on the psychological depth of the movie; atmospheric tension; and great lead performances, while others in tune with its heavy reliance on horror cliches, such as jump scares. However, all agreed that “Smile” marked a new and terrifying experience now belonging to the modern canon of horror.
More than just a slow-burning horror film, it dug deep into trauma, mental illness, and what fear truly entails. If abundant scariness and a trudge pace didn’t put “Smile” at the forefront of genre films for 2022, then perhaps nothing would.
Conclusion
“Smile” is a horror movie that provides more than cheap thrills and jump scares. It delves into the darkest corners of the human mind when trauma can consume and destroy. Creepiness abounds in this movie, but good performances and a long-story-short premise make it a contemporary take on the psychological horror classic. The true fear in “Smile” is that even the most innocuous actions may mask something deeply horrific within.
