Gillipedia Official Rating: Missed opportunity to use McDonald’s old motto, “We love to see you smile.”
Score: 6/10
Smile has all the highs and
lows of horror films. It has some solid scares, an abundance of jump scares,
and characters making frustrating decisions. It’s one of the most entertaining
movies I’ve watched all year, but I can’t overlook its shortcomings from a
storytelling perspective—hence, the mixed score.
This film is basically a combination
of the incredible It Follows and the classic but honestly overrated The
Ring. Of the former film, there's a shot of our smiling creature taking the form of a giant person in a dark hallway-- almost the exact same shot from when It Follows hired the tallest man in the world for one of its scares. Our main character Rose is a therapist clearly still suffering from
some childhood trauma. Things kick into gear when she’s called in to talk to a
college student who witnessed her professor kill himself earlier in the week.
The girl is frantic and paranoid, but we the audience know that this “thing”
she vaguely describes is the menace of the film. She describes something that
only she can see that told her she’s going to die today. Suddenly, she starts
freaking out and exclaiming something is there. Then, calm. The girl looks
straight at Rose, wearing a large, creepy grin, and slowly slices her throat
open.
What is revealed through the film is
this evil spirit has now latched itself to Rose. It can take the form of any
person with the common trait being an ear-to-ear grin and a slightly downward
stare for maximum creepiness levels. The spirits like to first torment its
prey, so Rose has roughly a week before the spirit will attempt to take over
her body and force her to kill herself. So that’s the basic setup. What does
the film do well, and where could it improve?
First, they hired great people to be
the evil spirit. The girl from the beginning who is frantic and passes the
spirit to Rose is fantastic in all the different emotions she had to portray
over the film. Outside of the film, they also had the best marketing campaign of recent memory having their actors attend stuff like baseball games and simply smile at the cameras for the entirety of the event. The way the spirit messes with Rose is fun in many parts, and
one jump scare during the climax in particular stood out in getting me to
actually flinch. The film also does its best to combine themes of past trauma
to how the spirit continues to live and move from host to host and connects
that with Rose. There’s creative uses of the spirit, and the sound design is
far above typical horror films which made seeing this in theaters a big plus.
Even the transition shots do their best to keep you feeling uncomfortable by
showing you upside down shots—we as humans don’t react well to what we’re not
used to.
Lots of good stuff, right? Well, some
of this bleeds into my critiques as well. There’s an overreliance on jump
scares—one for opening cat food? C’mon. Since we all know this is building up
to one night that actually matters, the scares along the way can feel like
slight filler since even though they can be disturbing, we’re not too concerned
about the consequences if Rose isn’t meant to die yet. There's also a lack of smiling imagery throughout. She sips from a smiley face mug in one scene, and stares at a doctor's chart with different levels of smiling with how you're feeling, but outside of those and the initial client's blood splatters forming a smile, I wanted to see more smiles out in the wild!
But my biggest frustration is how much
this movie relies on its characters being horror movie characters. Where the
cast of It Follows logically comes up with a plan to deal with the
creature from that film, Rose doesn’t think of the obvious solution to deal
with the spirit until right before the ending—a conclusion I thought of at
least 30 minutes earlier. Also, Rose is a therapist. You would think she could
piece together how crazy her initial client looked and would more logically try
to explain what’s happening to her; she even legitimately gets police reports
of evidence—THIS CHICK GOT THE RECEIPTS—and instead frantically and crazily only
yells stuff like, “I know I sound crazy, but you have to believe me! There’s
something haunting me that only I can see!” And it’s not just Rose. We have the
guy who plays A-Train in The Boys playing Rose’s fiancé, and despite him
being a frustrating character, it’s actually for different reasons and is more
unique from typical horror characters so I don’t mind that. But you also have
Joel, a cop who took Rose’s statement after her client’s suicide and also some
history with Rose that isn’t discussed in detail. He’s the one that helps Rose
find out the information throughout the film, yet he acts even more clueless
than her in what to do.
The last frustration is with an ending
that I have to imagine is meant to keep possibilities of sequels alive. If you’ve
seen any generic horror or slasher film before, you’ll know what to expect.
Which is a big reason why Barbarian from earlier this year to me is
clearly the best horror film of this year over Smile. For those that
have already watched this movie, I’ll go into spoilers after the end of this
review on the easy fix to improve this movie.
But if you haven’t seen Smile
or don’t care either way, I’ll finish the review spoiler-free. From the way
Rose acts around literally everyone, too much dependence on jump scares, and
frustrating character decisions and the ending, this films refuses to rise
above what has plagued horror films for years. But it’s also an easy to
recommend movie because it is undeniably fun and scary nevertheless with some
thrills that hint at good filmmaking. It’s some of the most fun I’ve had at the
theaters this year, but the movie-lover deep down is disappointed in the missed
opportunities. Keep reading if you’d like to hear me quickly fix this film
while spoiling the end.
Spoilers
ahead!! You’ve been warned. Multiple times. I can prove it. I too have the
receipts and am not afraid to show them.
So, first things first. If the film wanted to be
thematic by showing that Rose had finally overcome her grief of not helping her
mom when she was 10-years old, then the film could’ve taken an It: Chapter
Two approach and have her stand up to the monster and confidently boast how
what happened wasn’t her fault. To be fair, this would also deprive us of the
gnarly visual of the creature cracking her jaw open and literally climbing
inside her body.
That’s solution 1. I prefer solution 2 that lets
you keep the aforementioned visual. You can either let Rose keep this trauma or
give her something else traumatic, but then you should’ve had Joel literally
have that same situation where he stood by when someone committed suicide and
he blames himself for it. Having that backstory sets up the spirit then
transferring to him since he’s there to witness her suicide. That sets up the
genuine stakes. Then, before Rose is able to light the match and douse herself in
fire, you have Joel sprint to her and save her from the forced suicide. It
thematically is consistent, provides a satisfying ending, and curbs the norms
of a horror film. And if you’re worried about pacing by adding this extra
backstory for Joel, there’s easily scenes you could either remove or cut back
on to keep this film around that 2-hour range.
I feel like that’s a pretty quick and simple fix to
really enhance this movie. But that’s also just one of my many opinions
outlined here. Maybe you preferred this movie over Barbarian, think my
rating is too harsh, or actually agree with a lot of what I said. Always happy
to have discussions and hear others’ opinions, so don’t be afraid to reach out
and let me know!
