Review of Smile (2022) by Rebecca31 — 06 Oct 2022

Although at first glance Smile has the appearance of yet another generic movie destined for the pile of forgotten horror flicks, I’m delighted to say that much to my surprise it turned out to be scary, entertaining horror movie that all you horror fans out there won’t want to miss.

Dr. Rose Cotter (Sosie Bacon) is just about to finish a shift at work when she witnesses a bizarre and traumatic incident involving a patient. Soon after she begins experiencing truly frightening occurrences and visions that she can’t explain. Rose is now forced to confront her grim past in order to survive whatever it is that’s haunting her.

Smile is a movie that will scare you throughout the entire thing. It delivers on the many, many jump scares and it has enough dark undertones running throughout to separate it from other more generic horror movies. It has a lot of elements in it that you’ll recognise from various other horror movies, the most recent one that came to mind was It Follows. But where It Follows fails Smile succeeds. The third act is where many horrors fall down on, becoming ludicrous and silly. Rest assured with Smile, this is certainly not the case. It puts the audiences in a state of unease very early on and keeps putting on the pressure until the climax. All the while keeping the jump scares coming and using unsettling scenes to shock and unnerve you.

Sosie Bacon is a great lead and elevates the entire film. We also need to acknowledge all the actors used to give that nightmarish smile, creepy doesn’t even cover it. All you seasoned horror fans will see the jump scares coming and there’s no big twists but that doesn’t mean you won’t have a good time along the way. Even I jumped a couple of times. Also the poor woman next to me clearly wasn’t able for this, lots of screams and genuine terror so if you’re not able to sit through a tense, scary movie with plenty of jump scares then Smile might just be too much for you.

Sure it’s Halloween season now so if there’s a new horror in the cinema get yourselves there and sit back for a good scare. Many of you know by now that I love a good horror and I’d never recommend a bad one, and sure Smile hasn’t earned a place in the hall of fame or anything like that but it’s a decent horror that all you fans out there are going to like. Recommended for the horror movie fanatics.