I think we can all agree that the marketing for Parker Finn’s “Smile” has been pretty genius. It’s a movie that has built enough clout to attract an audience that’s been big enough to continue a large swell of even more horror films coming in to theaters. It’s good because now we can start to see more movies as immensely disturbing as “Smile,” one hopes. While it’s often compared to “It Follows,” I’d say “Smile” is more in the vein of “The Babadook.”
Where the aforementioned was about the overcoming rotting elements of grief and how it can rule our lives, “Smile” (based on the viral short film) is very much about mental illness. It’s about how trauma can be a terrible stain on anyone if we’re not equipped correctly. Sosie Bacon is very good in the role as Rose Cotter, a psychiatric doctor who is pretty much frail the moment we meet her. She’s a woman who works around the clock with psychiatric patients and has spent much of her life trying to confront her past that involved her mom’s substance abuse and trauma involving her death. She then meets a patient who is on the verge of a breakdown insisting she’s been seeing visions of people with gaping smiles that have caused her to lose control of her life very slowly.
When she commits suicide while also donning a large smile, Rose realizes that the trauma of the event may have just inflicted a curse on her. Immediately, she too begins to see visions of people with twisted smiles, and the more she digs in to the source of this phenomenon the more she fears for her life. “Smile” is a very disturbing and often terrifying story about trauma, mental illness, and the cycle of abuse that can occur in families. Rose is the protagonist of her story but the more she peels away the layers of this mysterious entity the more she begins to question if she is simply losing her mind much as her mother did. While the movie is very much a monster movie, the monster is only a small fraction of what is the horror that is the human mind.
The writers purposely keep us in the dark about the film’s villain, offering little in the way of explanation or even logic for its existence. What we do know is that it’s a sadistic entity that never allows its victims a moment of peace, and we’re witness to what demented madness it can inflict. Despite a climax that offers up an up close and personal look at the entity (kudos on the excellent effects), “Smile” is important in its commentary about how mental illness and trauma can rule our lives. It can even destroy it if we are simply unwilling to confront and process our trauma and what band aids we put on ourselves to forget the past and ensure a different future. Rose’s descent in to madness is just as scary as the titular entity.
The monster is horrifying simply because of how personal and up close it is which makes the whole ordeal she endures feel perverse and gross. Does the victim give the monster power or does the monster amplify its victim’s own grappling with mental illness? Hopefully we can delve a bit deeper in the inevitably sequel. If anything I’m not sure I liked Kyle Gallner’s character all that much, nor did I think we learned enough about Rose’s failing relationship with her boyfriend Trevor (Jessie T. Usher). Nevertheless, “Smile” has really interesting ideas and social commentary about mental health and the lack of understanding we have about it. It’s a scary look in to the cycle of mental abuse and how we can either carry it on to someone else, or eventually cut it down at its knees. It’s easily one of the best horror installments of the year.