Review Tuesday: SMILE (2022)

 

SMILE

People are dying violently from a suicide chain. 

This past scary season there were some notable new horror films. I already reviewed two of them, HALLOWEEN ENDS and BARBARIAN. Both were disappointing, so we didn't prioritize the remaining two, TERRIFIER 2  (which will be reviewed next week) and today's review, SMILE. 

Rose Cotter (Sosie Bacon) is a therapist who is called on to deal with a troubled young woman, Laura Weaver (Caitlin Stasey) who had witnessed her professor committing suicide less than a week prior. She goes from acting like a person with paranoid delusions to a seemingly collected individual with a big SMILE. With that huge smile across her face, Laura cuts her own throat, violently ending her life in front of the young therapist.  

The rest of the movie is about Rose trying to deal with the curse of the SMILE. 

Mrs Bax0jayz and I agreed that this reminded us of something else... Another movie with a death chain. IT FOLLOWS (of which my review posted earlier today). And just like IT FOLLOWS, Rose is trying to break the chain. Her biggest problem isn't even the curse. For a professional therapist she sure is terrible at trying to communicate her challenges to anyone else. In fact, she refuses to explain the actual logic stream that would have people compelled people to help her. The chain of twenty violent suicides that lead to her would have been enough to arouse the suspicion and assistance of anyone. But nope. She just says to everyone to trust her but won't tell them anything. 

 

This movie has an impressive cast and is nicely polished. The plot is okay, but the execution is pretty weak.  I would call this okay. 

More on IMDB