Smile marks the feature film debut for Writer/Director Parker Finn. As we follow his career, I think we’ll look back at this film and see all the bricks of a solidly built house were there, even if the house hadn’t been built yet.
However, this Mystery/Horror film leaves a bit to be desired despite the best efforts of the filmmaker and lead actress, Sosie Bacon.
The Plot – Smile
Dr. Rose Cotter works hard. She treats patients dealing with mental illness with the dedication and patience of any good medical professional.
After a particularly long week, Rose, played by Sosie Bacon, heads out the door to go home, until the phone rings, one last time.
In walks Laura Weaver, played by Caitlin Stasey, dealing with all kinds of stress, anxiety, and paranoia. Needless to say, she’s freaking out.
She babbles on incoherently about what she’s seeing and how she’s not crazy. Dr. Cotter listens attentively, until Laura explodes with terror in an instant.
Rose runs to call for help, when the ruckus going on behind her suddenly falls silent. She turns around to see her patient standing eerily still with a creepy smile stretched across her face.
Then, the awful happens. Rose struggles to deal with the loss of her patient, and starts seeing and hearing things, herself. Maybe Laura wasn’t as ‘crazy’ as her smile indicated.
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The Good – Smile
The Creepy Smile
All good horror films need a central concept or character that’s really simple and easy to digest. And, ‘Smile’ pulls out a really creepy, unsettling smile as its hook.
Who hasn’t seen a creepy smile in a picture or in a socially awkward situation and thought ‘how creepy’? That natural, visceral reaction translates well to the sense of fear and anxiety in this film, especially as a jumping off point for the big bad.
The grounding in reality of a creepy smile, also plays well with Writer/Director Parker Finn’s grounded-in-reality style starting point. He takes us from the known to the unknown, with the surreal nature of creepy smiles connecting to the supernatural nature of the horror.
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Sosie Bacon
Yes, Sosie Bacon is the real life daughter of Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick, but she’s not getting the lead role in a $17 Million Horror film based on nepotism.
A quick look at the IMDb page for Sosie Bacon, and we see 30 Credits to her name, mostly in episodic television, short films, and tv movies consistently since 2014. All those reps paid off well for Bacon in this film, giving her a wide range of believable emotions to pull from, as she slowly goes crazy.
In largely a solo journey for her character, the film’s success or failure largely falls on the likability and believability of Rose. And, Bacon more than holds her own on a solo journey against an ill-defined evil.
The supporting cast largely does well in their roles, but through line of the movie rests squarely on her shoulders. Characters come and go, but Rose is there at the center from beginning to end.
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The Bad – Smile
The Marketing Versus The Filmmaker
The marketing for any film is largely out of the control of the filmmaker themselves, as a totally separate job and area of expertise.
That being said, I feel like the trailers for this film revealed roughly 80-90% of the spoilers for this film before the movie even started. While that should not be a critique of the quality of the movie, it largely informs how the viewer comes into the film, and the expectations one has for the film.
The film you actually sit down to watch is more Mystery/Thriller than full blown Horror movie. And, because so much of the actual body of the film is spoiled before the film even rolls, there’s a real sense of ‘just-get-to-it-already’ as you’re watching a slow burn mystery play out.
You already know largely what’s going to happen, so the pacing of the film feels off as a result. The slow reveal of a mystery is totally wasted on the audience because the audience already knows more than the lead character of the film.
And, since the run time comes in at just short of two hours, the slow burn reveal drags on and on for what feels like forever.
The Director
While I think Parker Finn has a huge future ahead of him, there are some internal logical consistency issues in Smile that hurt the film.
As a Spoiler-Free/Non-Spoiler Review, I can’t go into the specific things I’m talking about without spoiling the film.
While Finn does an above average job of introducing characters and taking us on a journey through them, there are gaps in the storytelling that probably result from cutting the film’s run time down to get it under two hours.
The result is rather abrupt shifts in tone and pacing from scene to scene, where the smooth work of a clearly talented film maker gets chopped down to a more manageable run time. In other words, Finn’s first feature feels fragile and fragmented from the Freshman filmmaker. Wow, alliteration!!!
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The Review – Smile
While there’s a lot to like in the premise and high concept of a creepy facial expression, ‘Smile’ feels a talented young filmmaker went into this film trying to make a movie that would satisfy himself and his film school friends, rather than general audiences wanting a fun/scary horror movie.
Instead of designing a story to be told in a much shorter run time, Finn probably directed a film that felt great at two and a half to three hours long, and then got chopped down to 115 minutes.
Other than two short films and a black and white profile picture, he’s so new I can’t find much on Finn from IMDb and a Google search. Even under the ‘Smile’ Wikipedia page, his name remains link-less — with no Wikipedia page of his own.
The spoilery-nature of the trailers deeply affect how one watches ‘Smile’ and the expectations of the viewer. Add in the inexperience of the filmmaker, and you get a somewhat herky jerky viewing experience while you keep looking down at your phone to see if the film is over, yet.
Good/purposeful Cinematography gets counteracted by low quality CGI in what should have been a much better film than the low budget $17 Million indicates.
Jessie T. Usher, Kyle Gallner, Robin Weigert, Rob Morgan, and Kal Penn also star.
If watching the trailer made you want this film, you won’t be disappointed, even if the actual film is more mystery than horror.
If you’re reading this review and trying to decide whether or not to invest two hours of your life, I’d say skip it. Or, at most, wait until streaming.
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Writer/Director Parker Finn makes his feature film debut in 'Smile', with Sosie Bacon starring in this Suspense/Horror film.
