Review: Smile

Image courtesy of Paramount Pictures.

 Parker Finn's feature debut, "Smile," is a horror film that impressively creates an unsettling and tense vibe from its beginning and never really lets up. The mood of constant doom and the eerie aura that the film creates are certainly effective. You know how it feels when you're short on sleep, and everything feels gloomier or hazier? That's the vibe that "Smile" gives off during its entire running time.

So, it's unfortunate that other elements of the picture are less successful to the extent that the film feels like yet another derivative tale of a person - in this case, a woman who tries and fails to get people to believe the horrible things that are happening to her, a prevalent theme of recent horror movies - caught up in a series of events in which some type of evil has been passed along to her, and she must try to figure out how to break the chain before she becomes its next victim.

You've seen this story before - and in much better movies, namely the brilliant "It Follows" or the truly frightening 2002 remake of "The Ring." Both of those films involved young women who have been targeted by some sort of curse that has claimed others and now threatens them. "Smile" follows those films almost beat for beat, although it's a lot bleaker.

The film follows a young doctor named Rose (Sosie Bacon) who loves helping her patients, has a seemingly doting fiance and a tense relationship with her sister. As a girl, Rose witnessed her mother's death - although it's not clear what exactly happened, I'd guess she took some pills - and has never quite gotten over it.

One day, she meets a distressed patient who tells her that some thing has been following her. It shows up on other people's faces as a creepy smile, and the patient says that she believes her time is short. Just moments later, she takes a piece of a broken flower pot and cuts her throat.

Rose, having witnessed the suicide, soon finds herself targeted by whatever type of demon or evil spirit that was taunting her patient. Through some research, she realizes that each of the demon's victims have had trauma in their past and have committed suicide in front of someone else, therefore passing the curse on.

"Smile" displays some of the highs and lows of the horror genre. On the one hand, it does a decent job of providing a creepy tone and atmosphere, and its horrors are tied thematically to the concept of how a traumatic incident can haunt people throughout the course of their lives. 

On the other hand, the film often falls back on jump scares - although there are a few that legitimately made me jump - which is a cheap tactic that often involves something jumping out at an unexpected moment to frighten audience members. It's the equivalent of standing behind a doorway, jumping out on unsuspecting victims and shouting "boo!" Typically, if a film is able to create a tense or creepy atmosphere, relying on jump scares doesn't seem necessary - but "Smile has more than a few of them.

There are also some odd choices made by the filmmakers. A smaller example is the inclusion of an old 1950s pop song in the credits that seems to be there only because, I don't know, older songs sound creepy to younger generations - or something like that. The song has nothing to do with the film's story.

Worse, the film's relentlessly bleak take on the suffering of its characters could be - and has been by at least one critic - described as "trauma porn." This is the type of horror movie that utilizes its characters' past traumas for scares and, late in the film, contains a moment that's meant to be cathartic. Moments later, we find out that this all meant nothing. It's as if the film is saying that one might as well succumb to one's traumatic experiences because they'll never let go.

At one point, Rose's psychiatrist tells her that because she will likely never relinquish her traumatic scars, she must learn to live with them. However, when Rose apparently does that, it's seemingly not enough. In the first decade of the 21st century, it became de rigueur for horror movies to have uncompromisingly bleak endings. Not surprisingly, some of my favorite horror movies of the century - "It Follows" or "28 Days Later," for example - are sprinkled just slightly with hope.

There's nothing wrong with bleak horror - "Hereditary" would also be among my favorite horror movies of this century - but it has become a turnoff when a horror movie dangles some sort of resolution to its' characters problems, only to snatch them back away for the purpose of being bleak. 

However, if "Smile" had not mostly been a rehash of better films from the genre, perhaps I might have been more forgiving. As it stands, it's not a bad movie. In fact, it's often creepy and Bacon's performance helps carry the film through some of the rockier spots. Genre enthusiasts will want to give this one a go - and there's likely much they'll find that they like. But ultimately, "Smile" doesn't do enough to distinguish itself from other films with similar plot lines and, despite some bona fide creepiness, didn't leave me with enough to grin about.