Saturday, March 4, 2023

Smile

Movie Name:
Smile
Year of Release: 2022
Director: Parker Finn
Starring: Sosie Bacon, Kyle Gallner, Jessie T. Usher, Robin Weigert, Caitlin Stasey, Kal Penn, Rob Morgan, Gillian Zinser, Judy Reyes, Jack Sochet, Dora Kiss, Nick Arapoglou, Perry Strong
Genre: Horror, Thriller
Score out of ten (whole numbers only): 6
Watch it on Amazon Prime

Synopsis and Review
"Smile" is the feature directorial debut from writer/director Parker Finn, after a few prior shorts (including one by the title of "Laura Hasn't Slept", which was the inspiration for "Smile" itself). The film focuses its narrative on the story of Rose Cotter, who is a therapist working in a State Institution, much to the dismay of her sister. Rose herself has a traumatic past, as a result of the brutal death of her mother when she was a child, due to an overdose. Rose is confronted with a traumatized patient who is brought in, a woman by the name of Laura Weaver, who witnessed her art history professor die by suicide. Laura claims that an entity has been haunting her, forcing her to witness random people smiling at her all the time. Laura eventually commits suicide in front of Rose, who suddenly sees another one of her patients persistently smiling at her. Rose's hallucinations start becoming more persistent, making her seem dangerous to others around her. A traumatic event at her nephew's birthday party alienates her from her sister, and she soon is isolated from her fiancée as well. She eventually seeks out the help of her former boyfriend Joel, a policeman, in order to know more about Laura and her professor. They soon uncover what seems to be a long string of suicides, where the witness to the suicide soon becomes the next one to die. Rose quickly realizes she's the next victim, and desperately tries to understand how she can save herself.
Unlike "M3GAN", who had a rather straightforward approach to its villainous central character, "Smile" has some eerie similarities with Gore Verbinski's "The Ring", where one entity feeds off the chain of victims it collects, instigating that continuous chain. The film's director, Parker Finn, manages to create a progressively more suspenseful and uneasy environment, particularly as Rose's close relationships quickly deteriorate, leaving her isolated, and even more exposed to the haunting of the entity. Again, and similarly to Rachel Keller/Naomi Watts in "The Ring", Rose has to trace the source of the deathly chain, since she is indeed the next one on the line. The film manages to introduce the character of her ex-boyfriend to help with this discovery process, bringing this aspect of procedural storyline to the narrative. All these aspects, though not the freshest perspective on this genre, are effectively done. However, when it comes to understanding the characters, both the lead ones and the main supporting ones, they all could have benefited from having some additional nuance and information to better contextualize who they are, and how their relationships have been established. As it is, Rose's romantic relationship quickly dissipates, as does her relationship with her sister, both being quickly brushed aside, leaving her only with her ex-boyfriend, whom we only know is a policeman who still harbors feelings for her. All this to say: the characters are sketches, who are eventually vessels for this entity to wreak havoc. While the film does have some genuine scares, mostly courtesy of the strong performance from Sosie Bacon who goes all in, the supporting characters themselves are quickly tossed aside, and somewhat unresolved, which may be one of the biggest issues with the film (Robin Weigert and Kyle Gallner provide good support to Sosie Bacon in their roles). The production team is solid, featuring the cinematography from Charlie Sarroff and musical score from Cristobal Tapia de Veer. Worth watching.  

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