After witnessing a bizarre, traumatic incident involving a patient, Dr. Rose Cotter starts experiencing frightening occurrences that she can't explain. Rose must confront her troubling past in order to survive and escape her horrifying new reality.
- Released:
- Runtime: 115 minutes
- Genre: Horror, Mystery, Thrillers
- Stars: Sosie Bacon, Jessie T. Usher, Kyle Gallner
- Director: Parker Finn
Comments
- hosolof - 13 January 2023
Average at best, a poor amalgam...
I don't normally write reviews but this is essentially a poor amalgam of a bunch of other, quintessentially better, horror films.
The plot seems like it has been stolen and warped from the fantastically well executed and significantly more freaky "It Follows", the visuals have been almost completely ripped off from "The Conjuring" series (not that they were particularly good) and the acting, whilst Ms Bacon is convincing in the lead role in her precipitation into madness, there are too many similarities between her performance and the much more convincing and far scarier performance from Toni Collette in her incredible performance in "Hereditary". Bacon is also let down by some lackluster support acting almost accross the board from her co-stars.
Do yourself a favour and stick with It Follows and Hereditary... In fact, watch them back to back and then jump around a bit and you will mix up the stories into what ultimately became Smile, but you will be far more satisfied ;) - vgclairisch-1 - 9 January 2023
Practically Perfect but Problematic
So the main character is a therapist who has a traumatic past (guilt over the death of her mother, whose dying pleas for 10-year-old her to call 911 she ignored) and it has ruled her relationships throughout her life. Her sister is in complete denial and so their relationship is strained, she dumped her former boyfriend when she felt she was getting too close to him and her current fiance is kept at arm's length, even proving himself to be untrustworthy with her deeper emotions.
She witnesses the gruesome suicide of a young woman who had also just witnessed a gruesome suicide. Then she (the therapist) begins to see awful visions and hear things. Of course the "mental health professional goes crazy" trope is a familiar one, but this is done in a way that seems intentionally trope-ish. After all, everything in the film is seen through her distrust of everyone (including herself) and the trauma that she experienced as a 10-year-old....so it makes sense that some of the things she experiences are a bit cartoony. It really works.
Well she figures out that in order to beat the monster, she has to kill someone with a witness in order to pass on the curse of being haunted by it (although she would then still not be free, spending the rest of her days in prison). But she gets the brilliant idea to confront her demons instead, driving to the derelict house where her mother died. She literally confronts her past and kills the monster by setting it on fire, and the house with it. She drives back to ex-bf's house and fesses up to her feelings. It seems like all is going to be okay.... And that's when this movie seriously screws the pooch.
Because ex-bf turns into the monster and attacks her. She runs out of his apartment but OPE! It's actually the house! She never escaped! And now ex-bf has come to save the day, just in time for her to suddenly, with no explanation, stop fighting and allow the monster to climb inside her body. So she sets herself on fire (of course with the creepy grin all victims wear) and the curse is passed on to him.
I have so many problems with this. My two biggest complaints are that the sudden switch and her completely unprovoked surrender were NOT earned. Nothing previous and nothing after indicated why this sudden shift. Instead of being a story about a woman battling her own mind told through the lens of cosmic horror, it became cosmic horror that manipulated a "trending topic" into a monster story with no inherent value other than shock and grotesquerie.
Even more troubling than that: the movie has beautiful symbolism and allegory with the current state of mental health facilities and services, and really shows mental illness in a way that feels raw but respectful. I drew many parallels to my own struggles with mental health and was truly rooting for her to maybe not completely overcome the monster, but find a way to exist in spite of its presence. I am not usually a fan of happy endings in horror- I don't expect it and it usually feels very forced- but in this case, I wanted to see some ray of hope. That's where the story was pointed. That's where the main character took it.
So you can see why, when she all of a sudden allowed this thing to replace her in body and mind, destroying her in every sense of the word, it didn't track and I was stunned. The movie was so full of fake-outs that I expected it to be another one. I had to process for several minutes when the credits rolled to even understand the emotions I was feeling. Anger! Insult! Betrayal! Disgust!
For a movie that spent 95% of its runtime showing someone fighting for their life, their sanity, and the trust and help of their loved ones to spend the last ten minutes throwing that out the window felt like I could only take away one message: "You will never win against your demons. Even when you think you've made progress, they will come back. So you might as well give up and end it all now." And that is a message that any filmmaker should be ashamed and terrified to send out into the masses.
