Smile

One of very few horror movies that managed to surprise me this year. When the trailer came out, I thought it was gonna be another dumb, incompetent mess.

I was proved wrong.

From the very start, everything from the directing, performances to the cinematography and sound design were absolute stunning. How a low budget managed this feat was beyond me but the film was simply mesmerizing to look at.

The horror was quite effective with jumpscares and dreadful moments, albeit some cheap ones but not that distracting. They were able to build up the tension so well and never intended to tone it down right till the very end. The plot was simple enough to interlink all relevant characters to make me care about them, although some could complain 90% of the characters were just filler and I might agree with that. However, the protagonist was good enough to carry the whole show.

One thing that may not sit well with a lot of audience was the use of mental illness. Smile handled it decently but don't expect Oscar worthy exposition. And no, it wasn't exactly the main theme so try not to quit halfway through because there would be surprises by the last act of the film.

Give it a go. I'd say it was well worth the time for horror fans like myself. This was not just some Annabelle or Insidious sequels but something more.

This movie had me scared and on edge from start to finish. It's been a long time since I saw a horror movie this good.

The story is a bit cliche at some points, but it is well written and well made most of the time. The acting is great as well, which is not always a common thing when it comes to horror movies. It is very well directed and the atmosphere is really eerie.

The first girl to die in the movie probably had the most unpleasent smile I have seen in maybe my whole life. Especially when the therapist started seeing her in the darkness as an hallucination. That really gave me the chills. Then there were some smiles that was not very scary, like the patient Carl. The pacing of the movie was excellent. It got more and more creepy as the story progressed. The ending really etched into my brain, and I actually thought I was gonna have nightmares that night, which does not happen to me very often. The day after I saw this movie, a car passed me by, and the old man driving looked at me and smiled... The only thing I could think about was this movie.

This was Parker Finn's first feature film. I really hope he makes more films like this one. A good start on his writing/directing career. Well done!

I was pretty hyped for this movie, not going to lie. I wasn't expecting some 11-time Oscar winning masterpiece, but I did expect an intense, edge-of-your-seat scarefest like that of 'Insidious' or 'Sinister', where the movie is dripping with creepy unsettlingness from start to finish. 'Smile' is not that. What 'Smile' does well is build up the jump scare, but unfortunately (and more importantly), 'Smile' forgets to deliver the scare in each of these sequences it repeats throughout its way overlong 2-hour runtime.

Example, the main character will be staring down a dark hallway while the music tenses and camera slowly zooms in, and then the phone will ring SO LOUD. This is NOT a scare! This is just lazy and, above all, annoying. These "jump scares" happen throughout the ENTIRE movie and are extremely obnoxious. I can respect jump scares if there's actually something scary at the end of the build-up, not just an obnoxiously loud noise that has nothing to do with the tension that was just wasted. An example of an ACTUAL jump scare would be like when the Lipstick Demon appears at the table for the first time in 'Insidious'. THAT is a warranted jump scare.

The plot of 'Smile' and the way the characters unravel it is almost identical to 'The Ring'. No new ground is broken, which was expected, but I at least expected a little more originality than a copy/paste story of 'The Ring' with a good amount of 'It Follows' copied as well, yet is far less than both those movies.

What I thought was pretty good was the ending, when the demon finally reveals itself. The design of the demon and what it does to its victims is actually pretty great/gruesome. Unfortunately, by the time we're introduced to the Smile demon, the movie's over. Such a shame, as this movie could have been a balls-to-the-wall nail-biting chiller. The score for this movie was hands-down the best and creepiest part. The music reminded me of 'Sinister's music, as in there was something off about it, making it unnerving.

Overall, this movie has been done before and done MUCH better. Has it's moments, but drags on without any scares for far too long.

6/10.

Sosie Bacon plays an incompetent therapist who mutters platitudes and stands about doing precisely nothing while bad things happen to her patients.

After demonstrating her inability to administer basic first aid to anyone within a fifty mile radius, she catches a case of the spooks. The spooks then follow her around being all creepy and not doing much, perhaps as an ironic form of mockery. None of the characters, supernatural or otherwise, seem to be any good at their jobs.

This is dimwitted nonsense, but it's excellently produced. Decent acting, good cinematography, tight editing and engaging direction. It's a good time, despite the braindead characters, copy-paste writing, appalling dialogue and endless cliches. It's an amusing and occassionally effective pulpy jumpy horror - a highly polished turd that is so shiny you stop noticing the smell.

Worth a watch, once, just for fun.

Literally just wanted to pull my heart out. When would the heart racing adrenaline end! Cinematography was amazing, loved the lighting. The sound was out of this world, so don't skip out on the "special sound" showings. It was unpredictable fresh horror in my opinion, this along with barbarian pair for some of the top horror films in I would say in the last couple years. Give it a watch and really think of the moral here. There was more to the story than what was shed into the light. For those whom call this a snooze fest don't understand the meaning of popcorn flick. Just good classic horror actually keeping you at the edge of the seat continuously guessing. Solid film, great acting.