'Smile': A Harmless Gesture Turns Sinister

Parker Finn's feature film Smile, which is adapted from his 11-min short film, Laura Hasn't Slept, is the newest confident horror directorial debut that has the same formula as Asian horrors where there’s a sinister pattern in several mysterious deaths in which the main character is trying to solve... or avoid... or both.

Paramount Pictures

The main character is Dr. Rose Cotter, played with conviction by Sosie Bacon, a clinical psychiatrist who starts experiencing menacing occurrences after witnessing a traumatic incident with her patient. A patient who turned a harmless gesture of smiling into something sinister.

The plot is very similar to The Ring, or The Grudge, or any other horror movies wherein the lead tries to solve and survive a curse that plagues a series of mysterious deaths. This time, the ploy is neither watching a cursed videotape or seeing oneself in a bagua mirror. As you have guessed, it's when you see a person smile. And not your ordinary smile, a smile that's either going to creep you out or make you uncomfortable because of how unhinged it looks. It doesn't help when that smile is associated with several jumpscares that could give one nightmares.

More than that, Smile has an underlying message about how society treat people with mental illnesses. But sometimes that feels like a stretch when the curse itself is revealed to be an evil entity that goes beyond mental health. It does however exploit people with traumas so there's that.

Smile somewhat struggles to find the perfect balance of dramatic and frightening tone to reach its full potential in incorporating an entity that exploits people’s trauma. A terrifying popcorn horror nevertheless. It's scary, seldom funny, and a decent addition to horrors of the same kind.

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"Smile" opens in PH cinemas September 28.

MTRCB RATING: R-16