Okay, at the risk of newbies thinking that this is a blog solely for scary movies, I would just like to take a minute to remind everyone that it happens to be spooky season and it is what it is.

Now then.

I don’t know about you, but when I saw the trailer for Smile, I was kinda like, eh okay. A nepotism star (Sosie Bacon is the daughter of Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgewick), a plot structure that we’ve seen a dozen times, and gratuitous creepy smiles. But I ended up being impressed by the artistic license of the movie, and by mad decent acting from everyone involved. Let’s get into the plot…

Dr. Rose Cotter is a psychotherapist who works at a psychiatric facility in Princeton, NJ (ayooo). She’s dedicated to her job, often working long hours from night shifts into day shifts with little rest, and devoted to her service. One day, she is assigned a patient who claims to be seeing people who aren’t there, and notes that they’re always smiling a wide, menacing smile. But before Rose can probe for further details, the girl commits suicide right in front of her—slitting her throat with a piece of a broken vase. Impacted by what she’s seen, Rose speaks with the police, and then goes home. But this is about to be the beginning of her own experience with this entity. At first blaming her visions on the trauma of the girl’s suicide, Rose soon starts to realize that the smiling people she sees are in fact real—but only to her. It’s up to her to come to the bottom of what’s tormenting her, why, and how she can stop it.

Like I said before, this plot structure is nothing new. We’ve seen “chain curse” structures from J-Horror tales like The Ring and The Grudge, as well as US horror movies like It Follows. In fact, I was mentally preparing for this movie to be exactly like It Follows within the first 15 minutes. But I was pleasantly surprised. Even though the basic plot structure is a little predictable, the movie flexes its own premise throughout its entirety: that your brain is your own worst enemy. As a result, there are plenty of twists, turns, and jump scares throughout Smile that’ll keep you on your toes. And I mean that. There isn’t a span of more than five minutes at a time that is completely straight story, and that means that for most of the movie you’re looking through your fingers waiting for the thing to show itself somewhere totally unexpected. After all, it’s all in her head, it can be anywhere. This also leads to quite a few fakeout scenes, where the entity is messing with her and leads her to believe she’s in reality when she’s seeing something totally different.

Another thing that I ended up really enjoying about Smile is the soundtrack. Jump scares and fakeouts tend to be the hallmark of cheap horror, but the music in this movie elevates them to another level. While traditional scoring might have made them seem predictable, the uneasy music that we hear throughout the film makes it hard to take anything at face value. And that takes it to the next level. The music is up there with the sound effects and trippy music that are the crowning feature of movies like The Shining or Annihilation. Super unsettling.

And last, but not least, I really have to eat my words regarding Sosie Bacon. She does a completely believable job of this character’s mental duress. When she starts seeing things, we can tell that she’s in a state of denial but that she’s still shaken up. And when she starts to realize how intently this thing is following her, her pure terror is 100% on point.

On a deeper note, this movie has a lot to say about trauma and how it affects us in the long-term and in the short-term. The introduction scene shows us Rose coming upon her mother, dead after overdosing on bills and alcohol, and that trauma is something that comes up several times throughout the movie, and is also a key part of the climax and the finale. There’s a strong emphasis on facing trauma and learning how to live with it—otherwise it’ll torment you forever.

Way better than I expected. Four outa five.