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Smile Movie Review

Smile is a 2022 horror film directed by Parker Finn and starring Sosie Bacon in the main role. It is a familiar, but very well made genre flick.

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“How fucking dare you come here!“

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After witnessing a bizarre, traumatic incident involving a patient, Dr. Rose Cotter starts experiencing frightening occurrences that she can’t explain. As an overwhelming terror begins taking over her life, Rose must confront her troubling past in order to survive and escape her horrifying new reality. The movie’s premise is a solid one and the titular smile is well used for scares here, but the execution of this story was troublesome.

It was obvious watching this movie that it was based on a short story as the concept is very simple, yet they extended it to a runtime of almost two hours, resulting in a lot of padding. An hour and a half would have sufficed. The overall mystery is solid and the psychological sequences are also okay, but overly silly for anybody who knows anything about psychology.

Sosie Bacon killed it in the role of Rose. She is the main reason to see the movie. A daughter of Kevin Bacon, this is a rare case where nepotism actually turned out positive as she has a lot of great acting talent and she played the protagonist’s more emotionally tumultuous scenes superbly. It’s a shame that other supporting characters suffered as a result of the movie putting a heavy emphasis on its lead heroine.

Smile is well shot, solidly directed and the jump scares are actually very well executed. They are overly pronounced and most of the movie is composed of these scenes, but at least their execution was strong, leading to some genuinely creepy moments that were very effective. The highlight is that brutal, disturbing ending that was a great way to cap off the story. I’ve had fun with this movie and the curse storyline ended up being well crafted overall, but it’s too repetitious given its extensive runtime.

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