Smile! Or Cry Over The Money You Spent

A workaholic therapist goes through a traumatic event: a patient commits suicide with a creepy smile in her eyes. This event triggers a series of hallucinations and frightening events.

Smile’s script has a curious focus: the smiles we offer in abundance throughout life turn into a deadly threat, a call from the unknown capable of driving the sanest minds crazy.

Despite presenting a premise that takes itself seriously and tries to be original, the film ends up resting on the genre’s well-known monotony: jump scares are added gratuitously just to make viewers move in their seats.

The emphasis on scares becomes even clearer during the transitions between scenes. Completely black screens that last 3 to 5 seconds are replaced by a loud noise and a dynamic cut of something jumping on the screen. The protagonist, terrified by an evil force, forgets that there are lights and switches 95% of the time, it is always dark and the camera always moves slowly towards the unknown.

When we try to understand what is causing so much terror, the information is presented in a lazy and shallow way, leaving us with an empty perspective to watch.

However, I cannot be a hypocrite and say that the film does not at least try to be something. The analogy between the forced smile and the masks we wear in our daily lives to hide what we feel is clear. A criticism of our act of denying our feelings and not dealing with our traumatic experiences.

It is a shame that all of this ends up being left aside in a poor execution and a script full of promises never fulfilled.

In the third act of the film, things get even worse, the characterization of the villain is caricatured and poorly executed, even bringing humor to what should be scary.

An honorable mention for one of the final scenes that pays homage to (or “copies”, but does not do the same) the classic scene from The Possession of Deborah Logan (2014).

In final considerations, Parker Finn’s script is not very memorable, but it is a fun experience for those who like to be scared.