Movie Reaction: Smile

Formula: Oculus + Truth or Dare

There is no way I’m writing this without bringing up my beloved Oculus a dozen times, so I’m just going to lean into it. You can break down my love of Oculus into two parts: 1) It’s an obstacle that even the most reasonable people can’t beat. 2) As it relates to destroying the mirror, Karen Gillan is incredibly reasonable in the movie. That’s it. Give me a good antagonist and don’t take shortcuts. That’s all it takes to make me blissfully happy watching a horror movie. I can still love horror if it doesn’t follow those rules, but I can’t think of any meeting those requirements that I don’t like and didn’t leave me shook for days. It’s what I also like about It Follows or The Ring.

 

Smile is a very similar movie to those others. It’s a simple yet unsettling premise. Sosie Bacon plays a psychiatrist at a hospital. One day she gets a patient in hysterics saying that she’s being followed by a shapeshifting creature who looks like people with a disturbing smile. The patient kills herself in front of Bacon and passes this onto her. Bacon then must figure out what’s going on before it kills her. This is a classic “pass it on” horror story. We get a lot of good scares from this following her while she tries to hold it together long enough to stop it.

 

This movie has the scares nailed. The creepy smile is super effective. The nature of this creature, having no clear form, gives the film great opportunities to scare. The filmmaker uses abrupt cuts wisely. I really did have so much fun watching this. It is as deserving of its popularity as any horror movie I’ve seen this year.

 

I do find aspects of the movie very frustrating. It has a lot of narrative crutches that it doesn’t need. Simply put, Sosie Bacon’s character is a very unimpressive horror protagonist. She isn’t positioned that way. She starts off very reasonable. Damaged, but reasonable. She’s a mental health professional, so if there’s anyone who would approach this kind of madness reasonably, it’s her. Instead, repeatedly, the movie has her explain what’s happening to her in the worst possible way. Look, what’s happening to her is crazy. She could go up to her fiancé or therapist or sister and cogently explain what’s happening to her. It would still make sense if they don’t believe her. It wouldn’t make the smile monster an iota less stoppable. I am much more interested in horror where someone does everything right and still may not be able to stop whatever is after them. Smile choses instead to manufacture unneeded adversity for the protagonist. In the scheme of things, this is a small gripe that hits a very specific bugaboo of mine. It may not even bother me that much by the time I watch this again. However, it is the only thing keeping Smile from immediately going into my top tier of horror films.

 

Verdict: Strongly Recommend