Smile is a Terrifying Horror Experience

 

Credit to Smile movie review & film summary (2023) | Roger Ebert

I wasn’t interested in watching Smile for a long time. I had seen the trailer to the first film, and I was not interested. It looked like it was going to be a jump scare fest, and I felt like too many great scenes were spoiled in the trailer. Then I finally decided to give the film a shot, once I heard that it was put on Netflix. 

I was amazed by how great this film was. 

And I was so pissed off that one of the best jump scares from the film was spoiled in the trailer. 

It’s also a really sad film, because the main character had trauma from her childhood, that took over her life. 

We follow the story of a therapist named Rose, who is introduced to an evil that haunts its victims with the use of smiles. 

Credit to In ‘Smile,’ Why the Grins Are So Grim — The New York Times

Rose is our main character, who had experienced a horrible trauma when she was a child. She had found the body of her mother, who had died when she was ten years old. She is now a therapist who wants to help people who are struggling with mental illness. 

She offers to aid a young student who had witnessed her own professor beat himself with a hammer. She is brought to the facility, and Rose attempts to help her. The girl explains to Rose that something is hunting her, and it always smiles at her. Rose doesn’t believe her at first, until the girl suddenly screams. She then offers Rose a creepy smile, and then she dies in a brutal way. 

Rose is traumatized by the experience, and after going through moments of terrifying hallucinations of smiles, her boss tells her to take a week off from work. 

Things only get worse from here. 

Rose realizes that the smile entity is real. 

Credit to ‘Smile’ Review: Grab and Grin — The New York Times

During one night, Rose can’t find her kitty, and believes that he had run off for now. The next day, she gets ready to go to her nephew’s birthday party. She smiles when her nephew is about to open her gift next, but things take a turn for the worst. 

The gift contained the body of her kitty, instead of the gift she had purchased for her nephew. 

The party goes into chaos, and they all watch poor Rose embrace her dead cat, screaming in fear from the smile entity that begins to mess with her. She collapses on top of a glass table, and screams in fear and pain from her wounds. 

Rose is sent to her old workplace, where she gets her wounds treated. She watches her sister and fiancé argue outside about the situation, as she comes to the conclusion that the entity is real. 

Her sister and fiancé refuse to help her, believing that she needs professional help from her childhood trauma. She turns to an unlikely person that helps her throughout the film. 

Rose enlists the help of her ex — boyfriend, who is a cop. 

Credit to Smile (2022) — IMDb

Rose and Joel work together, both of them learning that these strange horrific deaths are all linked together. It turns out that the professor who had died had also experienced a similar trauma when he had seen someone die in a brutal manner like his own death. 

Rose learns that this entity only goes after people who have some kind of trauma that involves death, and it uses these deaths to its advantage to continue its reign of terror. 

Rose and Joel go to speak with one man who had survived this terror, a prisoner who reveals to Rose that the only way to defeat the evil, is to kill someone else, and the evil will spare her. 

Rose refuses to go through with murdering someone, and she decides to take matters into her hands to defeat this monster. 

Credit to ‘Smile’ Ending, Explained: Does Rose Survive the Grinning Curse?

Rose goes back to her old house, where her mother had died. We get a sad twist, that during an episode of her mother, she had begged Rose to save her life. Rose runs away, leaving her mother to die. 

This was so tragic to learn, and I didn’t blame Rose. She must have been so terrified when she found her mother like that. 

Rose eventually confronts the entity, and she speaks to her dead mother, who has taken on her form. Rose goes against the monster, and they fight to the death. Rose sets the creature on fire, after it shows her its real form. Rose escapes from the house, and she leaves behind her old home that is now burning. 

She goes back to Joel, to apologize for shutting him out during their past relationship. She explains that her childhood trauma was too much for her to handle, and she refused to tell Joel about what she went through. She asks Joel if she could stay with him for now, and he doesn’t hesitate to let her stay. 

Then we get a fantastic twist. 

Rose never left her childhood home. 

Credit to Run | Michelob ULTRA Zero | :15s

Joel is revealed to be the entity, and she runs out of the apartment, only to find herself back at the house. She goes into a panic when she spots the real Joel at her house, and she screams, not wanting to let him inside, refusing to pass on the curse to him. 

The monster shockingly reveals its true form, that consists of multiple smiles on a skinless entity. 

It was so disturbing and wicked to look at, and it really shocked me with how amazing this creature design was. 

Rose screams until she goes into shock, and the entity possesses her body. Joel breaks down the door, and finds Rose covered in gasoline. She turns to him, a smile on her face. 

The film ends with Joel watching her die in shock, as she sets herself on fire with a match. 

That was one of the best endings to a horror film. I honestly did not like how I thought the film was going to end at first. I really thought the film was going to end with Rose getting her happy ending with Joel, and I thought the way she had defeated the creature was kind of cheesy. 

Once the twist happened, I was left in shock. I should have seen it coming, but damn, this was one of those great unpredictable horror films. 

That monster design is now going to haunt me for a long time.