We are in the very beginnings of October AKA Spooky Season, but we might have already had the best horror movie to come out this year: Smile. This movie I was worried would not be able to live up to its viral marketing that they have been doing, but I was really excited to be wrong. What looks like on the surface is your by the numbers jump scare movie turns into a slightly deeper take on mental health and dealing with your trauma of your past, including with how it affects your present.
Smile is about therapist Dr. Rose Cotter (played by Sosie Bacon) who experiences a bizarre, traumatic incident involving a patient at the hospital that she works at, who then starts to experience frightening incidents that start to wear down her mental health. We later find out in the movie that once you witness it, you usually do not last more than 7 days before the “entity” causes you to harm yourself. To fight this, Rose must confront her troubling past in order to survive and escape her horrifying new reality.
This is the feature length debut of director Parker Finn, who has directed a couple of shorts previously. I always enjoy when there are new entries to the horror space (the director of Barbarian another this year) because they can bring new ideas to the genre. I don’t think Finn really does that with this movie, more what it seems is taking already proven concepts and really solidifying them in a quality way. I think the use of dutch angles, inverted camera angles, and other horror tropes are really well done (if maybe a little too much) but they feel like a good deliberate choice to tell the disturbed mental state that Rose is in for the majority of the movie.
I think this is a good time to bring up that this movie should come with a MAJOR content warning. This movie delves into some really deep and dark subject matter that could be disturbing to some, especially if you have in the pass struggled with personal trauma, depression, or any thing that might have compromised you’re mental state. As someone who has in the past, this could end up bringing back some of those feelings, and if thinking about that does make you uncomfortable or is triggering to you then you will want to skip this movie.
When it comes to more traditional horror ideas, this movie does a really good job. I think while most of the great “jump scares” get spoiled in the trailer, they still save a couple of really great ones for the movie. Also the music, while not amazing by itself really does a good job of setting the tone when it is paired with the visual of the scenes.
Acting wise there is really nothing to write home about. Nothing is really bad, but nothing is really amazing either. Sosie Bacon does a pretty good job of playing Rose, but there really is nothing else that jumps out at all. One of the things that can ruin a horror movie is showing too much, and I think for the most part Smile does a good job of showing enough, and making sure what it shows is scary enough. I think like most horror movies, this gains something by seeing this in a theater with friends, and would probably lose something just watching this at home.
Overall I think Smile takes a relative simple concept and does a lot more with it then I would have expected. It is always tricky situation when horror movies try and touch on concepts like mental health and trauma since the track record there is spotty at best. Smile does a good job of treating those themes with more tact than most horror movies, and has an ending that is more dour than I would have expected. While some movies that have come out recently (looking at you Don't Worry Darling) are less than the sum of its parts, Smile really is more. Doesn't do one thing amazing, but everything put together really turns into a solidly scary psychological thriller with a deeper than normal message about dealign with trauma.
If you think that you are okay with dealing with themes centered around mental health and trauma then I say Smile is worth a viewing at your theater. While it does not touch the heights of probably the best horror/thriller movie Nope that came out earlier this year, this is probably the best horror movie we are going to get during Spooky Season this year