Smile review: A hard-hitting horror movie that puts a grin on your face

Polygon is on site at Fantastic Fest 2022 to report on new horror, sci-fi, and action movies hitting theaters and streaming. This review was published to coincide with the film’s Fantastic Fest premiere.

Parker Finn’s First Horror Film smile is carefully tuned to do different things for different viewers. For those unfamiliar with horror, this is an effective and effective horror extravaganza, full of big, startling scares and freakish, wear-and-tear tension.

But for the savvy horror crowd, who recognize the way Finn repeats in other popular horror films and can predict from the start where the story is going, it works in a completely different way. smile often winks at the audience and offers silence You know what’s coming next, right? You can see how bad this can get. It’s always easy to see what Finn is doing with his character and where he’s headed in the story. Yet, when the promised horror arrives, it’s never easy to ignore the impact.

Work from previous short films of the 2020s laura is not sleeping, Finn’s script takes little time to establish who his main character is before her world begins to fall apart. Bacon) is used to seeing people in danger and persuading them. She then encounters a very upset patient, she is some kind of malevolent entity that no one else can see, with a hideous smile that tortures her by appearing in the guise of people she knows. plagued by living things.

The story sounds like a paranoid delusion — and when Rose tries to tell other people about the shape-shifting, invisible, malevolent curse creature, she too has a paranoid delusion. “I am not crazyShe’s surrounded by her reserved and kind fiancé Trevor (Jesse T. Usher), her fragile sister Holly (Gillian Zinser), and her aristocrat and former therapist Madeline (Robin Weigert, light years from her turn). remote office). dead treeCalamity Jane). But Rose can’t find a way to sound convincing when she says it, especially to a world that’s cynical and cold-hearted towards psychotic patients.

smile There are often gimmicks and even corny horror movies packed with so many jump scares that the sheer pile-on is laughable. Finn uses sudden loud cues and brutally fast cuts to yell at and flinch viewers at mundane things like Rose nibbling on a hamburger and tearing off a hangnail.But no matter how excessively legitimate horrors pile up, they are both surprising and compelling. It is impressively tuned to give smile An efficient ride, if unusually unforgiving.

However, Finn pulls off the equivalent of a magician showing an audience how a trick is done, and does it so effectively that it looks magical anyway. smile rear ringRose experiences a provocative incident and discovers that she is nearing a deadly deadline, enlisting her reluctant but soulful ex to help her, and then the phenomenon’s A study was conducted with worrying results. ringfelt derivative (including some of its own clumsy sequels), smile Use the familiarity of the story to set expectations. When Rose finds a possible solution to her problem, smile It invites viewers to consider the logical ending of her discovery and wonder if she would make the same selfish choices played by Naomi Watts. ring – If so, who will suffer as a result?

Walter Thomson, MPA approved.

Similarly, smileThe setup for it laststhe threat travels virally from person to person, progressing relentlessly toward the next victim, wearing different faces and turning everyone in the protagonist’s life into a potential threat. but instead of feeling like an imitator, smile It uses familiarity to heighten the sense of danger to the point where viewers can no longer trust the person on screen to be human.

the human element smile It’s as carefully calibrated as the jump scares, in ways designed to keep the audience worried when they don’t flinch. Finn incorporates vulnerable and potential victims into the story: longtime horror fans will know Rose has a pet cat, Holly has a cute seven-year-old boy, or the ex Joel who helped Rose. I know you worry when you find out you have (Kyle Gallner). Her sensitive, open her heart and still in love with her. (Kal Penn also appears as Rose’s supervisor, a role specifically designed to provide targets for mayhem. Setting an especially rich emotional foundation between them. smile Preparing for disaster is painfully efficient. It’s bare-bones storytelling, with every new character and element designed to reinforce the sense of dread about who’s likely to die and how badly it’ll be.

The film’s central theme also adds to the sense of dread. From the moment the officer abdicates his responsibility to investigate the grotesque death, he scorns the victim, saying, “She sounds crazy to me!” smile is about the stigma surrounding mental illness and the urge to deny or demonize those who manipulate it.

Image: Paramount Pictures

Finn finds fertile ground in the vast and presumably unfillable gap between victims and well-meaning bystanders. The audience’s sympathy will be directed towards Rose, who lives with fear that she doesn’t know how to fight. But it’s also easy to see why others find it uncomfortable trying to deal with women who are behaving erratically, even dangerously, while blaming some sort of incomprehensible fear demon. .

A deeper version of the film could be even more vague about Rose’s situation, leaving us with the question of whether she really was just having a psychotic episode, caused by stress, overwork, and justifiable trauma. There is. Finn chooses to avoid that path and makes it pretty clear that something supernatural is at work. It’s a reasonable choice to make with a movie that genuinely cares about the people who might suffer when it happens while letting it happen. smile of potential subtleties.

But there’s nothing wrong with a horror movie designed to terrorize an audience rather than play a game with them. As a writer and director, Finn seems to know that people can go to horror movies for a variety of reasons. I am doing a meaningful job.

smile It hits theaters on September 30th.