LM23 Rating: You’ll be on edge up until the final fifteen minutes
Smiling is a pain
Who else hates smiling like me? I love laughing. I love being immersed in good times and good company. But portraying how I feel via a smile just feels completely unnatural to me. Every time it’s school portrait time or time to take that group photo at the restaurant, I feel like a clown trying to smile.
I had an overbite when I was young which was followed by braces. Not only that, I have high cheekbones or “chipmunk cheeks” as my cousin calls it. So when my hair is pulled back and I smile, my face looks swollen and I have a “fat face” in unplanned photos where I’m forced to SMILE!
And smiles can go from being sincere and cute to creepy and scary with a slight difference in the amount of teeth shown, amount of eye contact, and body language. Every girl has been a witness to a creepy man smile that spells danger at least one point in their lives if not more.
Sosie Bacon is a star in the making
Smile is one of those small budget movies that does a great job at masking (most of the time) that it’s a small movie with no real big stars. The headline actress is Sosie Bacon (yes, she’s more than six degrees away from the Kevin Bacon).
Bacon carries the movie as Dr. Rose Cotter,a dedicated psychiatric ward doctor in a hospital. She’s focused and understated, but her willingness to keep working despite the no sleep and that it’s a Saturday demonstrates the passion she has for her work.
And her work is not easy. Despite the pleas from her well-to-do older sister and brother-in-law to open a private practice where “crazies will pay you” to help them, she’s committed to the hospital.
It seems like another unexpected overtime shift for Rose when a call comes in about a PhD student named Laura who witnessed the unexpected suicide of her professor. And the suicide is gruesome and bizarre. Professor Gabriel Munoz apparently bludgeoned himself to death with a hammer.
The smiling incidents start
Laura is obviously traumatized from the ordeal and Rose meets with her in her delicate state. Laura pleads with Rose to listen to what she has to say. That she’s not crazy as she’s a PhD student. Laura goes on to describe how there’s something that’s after her and it can have different faces including those that are familiar to her. Rose can only understand what Laura is saying through the lens of a doctor and that what Laura is saying and seeing is not real.
Laura becomes hysterical and then it begins. As Rose calls for security, Laura has broken a flower vase and has a shard of ceramic in her hand. She’s not going to hurt Rose though. Instead, Laura turns the sharp edge on herself and dies from the self-inflicted wound.
The rest of the movie takes us on Rose’s journey of what may be some sort of after effect of witnessing such a horrific episode or it could possibly be some real evil paranormal entity at play. A big theme of the movie is the perception of reality. How when times get tough, people are quick to dismiss it as something benign or nothing to worry about. Rose herself started it by trying to tell her first patient, Carl, at the start of the movie that the voices and things he was seeing was not real.
Is what is happening to Rose real?
Lack of sleep. Forgetfulness. There’s always some vague but believable reason to explain away the bizarre events Rose is experiencing. But Rose is convinced what is happening to her is real. She studies the police witness statement Laura gave after she witnessed her professor’s suicide and she notices the part about Laura seeing the professor smile.
Rose also reviews the audio of her interview with Laura before she killed herself. And you just know there’s going to be some creepy voices or something picked up as long as the volume on the Apple laptop is turned up to maximum. There’s a strange sound which resembles heavy breathing that appears. But just as Rose realizes what she just heard, a jump scare with the appearance of Laura cuts the investigation short.
There are jump scares sprinkled into Smile, but it’s a movie that has an actual plot and story, so we keep moving along, discovering more scary and strange things. We’re with Rose as she is forced to go on a one-week leave from the hospital and her paranormal visions are repelling her loved ones away from her.
Most notable is when Rose does her best to put on a happy face for her nephew Jackson’s seventh birthday party. We can see her extreme discomfort as everyone is singing happy birthday and she’s doing her best to blend in, but it’s not really working. She smiles weakly as Jackson is about to open her gift. Earlier we were with Rose when she bought the toy train which her sister, Holly, said was what Jackson wanted. But something strange of course happened at the toy store. There was an odd close up of a board game featuring a smiling family. And shortly after that, Rose’s cat, Mr. Mustache, goes missing.
Everyone is excited to see what Aunt Rose bought Jackson and most horror movie fans know that it’s not a toy train, but probably poor Mr. Mustache. But the horror doesn’t stop there. Smile has a lot of unexpected twists and turns in how it freaks the audience out. Jackson is surprisingly calm but shocked when he takes the deceased Mr. Mustache out of the box. Rose takes Mr. Mustache and implores everyone at the party to believe her and that the monster was there. We see what Rose sees which is Laura sitting on a chair in the living room with the rest of the party and smiling maniacally. Rose trips and falls backward and crashes into a glass coffee table.
Only one person believes her
Rose’s personal life continues to unravel as her fiancé, Trevor, is starting to question if her erratic behavior is a genetic condition passed on from her mom. At the start of the film, we learn that Rose witnessed the death of her mom who drank and took pills the night she died. Seemingly all alone, Rose shows up at her ex-husband Joel’s apartment door. Rose’s ex-husband also happens to be a police officer.
Maybe it’s his vocation that makes Joel more apt to listen or question things, but Joel is the only person in Smile who’s willing to investigate Rose’s claims. Joel has access to crime files and he finds one that includes video evidence of a man who commits suicide, again in a very bizarre and horrendous way. Joel goes on to find even more evidence of up to 20 cases which featured people who killed themselves but before they committed suicide, they themselves witnessed a brutal suicide. Joel believes all of this is connected to what is happening to Rose.
Rose and Joel eventually meet with a man in prison who did not meet with the same fate as the other victims. He’s currently serving time in prison and he’s still alive. The man, Robert Talley, tells Rose that the only way to stop the curse is to kill someone, so the curse can be passed from you and onto that person. With that in mind, Rose decides to isolate herself at her abandoned childhood home where her mom killed herself.
The smile is revealed (sort of)
We finally get to see what’s behind the smile as the entity, in the form of Rose’s mom, morphs into a giant zombie like monster. Rose burns the monster and the house down and it seems like all is well as Rose drives back to Joel’s place.
But there’s still about 10 or 15 minutes left and so horror fans know the monster isn’t dead, yet. It’s still somewhere lurking. And so it is. Turns out Joel is the monster in disguise and it appears the monster takes the shape of its victims. We see the monster pull Rose’s mouth open and climb in.
The movie up until that bad CGI/special effects part was brilliant. The spookiness of the smiles and the unknown of when and where the ghostly apparitions would appear were not always easy to predict. When the security company calls Rose’s home after the alarm was triggered, at no time did I think it was the evil entity on the other end until the lady asked Rose if she was sure she was home by herself.
Witnessing Rose’s frustrations and being slowly broken down by the madness added to the anxiety of the film. There’s many times when Rose just screams and curses and hits at things in front of her. It’s probably something we would do if we’re in her situation and we’re alone to fend for ourselves. Rose also trembles and shakes and starts to bite at her fingernails and skins due to her feelings of being absolutely frightened. Unlike a lot of scary movies, we don’t often see the characters who are going through these traumatic experiences exhibit fear, rage, frustration, and nervousness. Or at least for a prolonged period of time. Rose was totally freaked out the entire time.
Flowers for the wardrobe and stylists
And this has nothing to do with the movie itself, but I also couldn’t help but admire how stylish the clothes, accessories, home décor, and cars were in the film. The blouses and sweaters that the female characters wore were very sophisticated and well-fitted. Like they wall came from an Ann Taylor or J. Crew ad. I couldn’t help but notice how pretty the blouse the evil “Smile Laura” wore when she appeared in the birthday party scene. The sunglasses Joel wore were definitely something a J. Crew or Banana Republic guy would wear. And even Dr. Northcott, Rose’s therapist, was dressed fashionably. Her pants and shoes were so pretty. And it was very brief, but I wanted to have another look at the awesome cream-colored bag Rose had with her at the start of the movie. Finally, the rings Rose and her sister Holly wore were magnificent. The sparklers looked like the kind women like them would be wearing. Big props to those involved with the wardrobe for the film.
Who or what is the evil entity behind the smile?
The weak link of Smile is that we don't have a clear idea of the evil behind the smile. Where did this start? Why is this happening? How do you get rid of it? We never learn anything about the evil force and that was a big miss for what started and almost ended so strongly. Even the look of the monster wasn't so scary. The creepy smiles were scarier.
If you want to see a spooky movie for the month of Halloween, check out Smile. The ending may be a bit of a cop out, but the rest of it is worth seeing.
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