There is no more common genre than horror movies. Even those of us who love him resign ourselves to a mountain of movies without identity that pass without pain or glory every week. But for that very reason, we all wait for that title that will take us out of lethargy and really scare us. Smile (Smile, 2022) is one of those exponents of the genre that shakes us in the seat and gives us genuine moments of terror.
The protagonist is Dr. Rose Cotter, who works with psychiatric patients. Her vocation has to do, perhaps, with a trauma from her childhood. One day a particularly distressed patient arrives and tells her an impossible story to believe. She tells the doctor that ever since she witnessed a suicide a few days ago, an evil presence that manifests itself sinisterly through the exaggerated smiles of people is stalking her. The doctor cannot believe her, until the patient makes a drastic decision that ends up placing the young doctor in a place she would never have imagined.
From then on everything will be hell for Rose, her fiancé, her sister, her colleagues, they don’t believe anything she says, only she and the viewers know what she is really experiencing. The film builds a very particular climate, in which things happen at full speed in the story but the story puts together many scenes of enormous suspense. The most obvious gimmicky jumps are mixed with those that are truly impressive. Not knowing what will happen is part of the fun of that game.
Director Parken Finn makes his debut here in the feature film and the results are so convincing that they even surprised the producers, who were planning to premiere on streaming, but after the test screenings they decided on a big world premiere. They even ran a disturbing campaign with actors posing smiling in public places, including baseball games, appearing unfazed and smiling as people watched the competition.
As is common in the last decade, horror cinema has had a whole stream of films with artistic ambitions, titles where a refined cinematographic language is sought, something that in most cases did not occur. There are many examples, like the devil’s legacy, The witch, Flees!, a silent place, follows you, Mandy, Do not breatheall titles that somehow seek to contribute something new and continue to terrify.
Despite the well-known formula that the film renews, it is visually clear that it has a marked and determined aesthetic, managing to generate great climates and situations that were born to stay. without becoming The Babadookthe obligatory appointment of any praise of the current horror cinema, Smile It has a great protagonist, the actress sosie bacon, and a director with unusual energy to tell his story. A film that managed, on its own merit, to reach theaters before streaming.
Smile It opens this week in theaters.
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“Smile”, the new horror movie that is all the rage around the world