In numerous manners, Smile is rife with meaning about a certain karmic retribution against “the shrink.” The one who, like Dr. Rose Cotter (Sosie Bacon, that’s right, Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick’s nepotism baby), says things such as, “I’m sure what you think you’re experiencing feels real. But it’s not.” And while she watches her patients’ pain with something that more closely resembles pity rather than empathy, she assures them that whatever they’re “imagining” will soon pass, as she usually deals with the kind of “crazy” (to use the ableist term) that falls under the umbrella of paranoid schizophrenic types. Like a patient of Rose’s named Carl (Jack Sochet), who frequently chants things like, “I’m going to die, Mom’s going to die, we’re all going to die” and “nobody matters.”
At the seemingly state-funded hospital Rose works at, such encounters are merely par for the course. Except that with Laura Weaver (Caitlin Stasey), a PhD student who recently witnessed the suicide of her professor, it becomes rapidly apparent that she isn’t fucking around when she says something’s after her. And that Rose is about to know exactly what it feels like for someone’s “visions” to be dismissed as nothing more than a “psychotic episode.”
When Rose subsequently witnesses Laura cower to the ground and crawl backwards in terror from an invisible presence, it’s obvious that an “entity” is possessing her, entering her. Running for the phone on the wall, Rose calls for help, turning around to find that it’s already too late. The very thing Laura described to her, people smiling at her—but not in a pleasant way—has taken over on her own face. Or what used to be her own face. For it now belongs to the evil being that slits her throat.
As for writer-director Parker Finn capitalizing on smiling as a source of terror, it’s true that when one thinks about “the smile” as a concept, everything about it really is quite sinister, creepy. The baring of teeth, the seeming stoicism of the eyes. And, of course, don’t even get one started on the inexplicable phenomenon of laughter, which can cause some to suffer from gelotophobia as a result of the often malicious intent associated with this highly human expression. In any event, the eeriness of a human smile is played up when, at a toy store that Rose enters to buy a train set for her nephew, the camera pans down to a 50s-style rendering of a white family grinning. The truth belying such smiles as these being the rampant racism “required” in the U.S. for the whites of the country to be so prosperous in the post-war years and beyond. So yes, Smile itself makes a searing observation on how, commonly, something sinister and menacing is beneath it—those “innocent” bared teeth, waiting to sink into one’s trauma in the case of Smile.
Just as Rose seemed almost to get off on trauma herself, much like the demon antagonist in the film, using it as a life force to keep her going. Running on fumes through eighty-hour weeks to the point that her boss, Dr. Morgan Desai (Kal Penn), insists that she leave for the day. And maybe, if she had been able to resist answering the phone that she hears ringing in her office after already departing, she wouldn’t have taken Laura on as a patient, therefore not been a victim of this curse (talk about an undercutting cautionary tale about not becoming a workaholic). One that allows a chain to go unbroken as the “Smile demon” hops from person to person after entering them and puppeteering their body to kill themselves in whatever grotesque fashion the demon sees fit. Perpetuating and propagating the cycle through getting the person watching to feel traumatized, thereby marking said person as the demon’s next target. A demon who, to add to one’s overall feelings of “being crazy,” can take on any human form of anybody that the target might know, even those from their past who have already died. And yes, the entire reason Rose became a psychiatrist was because, at the age of ten, she witnessed her own mother commit suicide. In fact, this is the moment that commences the movie, giving us plenty of insight into why Rose does what she does, as well as her level of trauma.
Her older sister, Holly (Gillian Zinser), had already fled the scene by the time Mother punched her own ticket, leaving Rose to discover their matriarch in such an indelible state. In the present, it’s clear the relationship is still strained between the sisters, as self-involved Holly talks of nothing but her son and his activities—and how it takes up all of her personal time—or how Rose ought to sell the house they grew up in so they can split the profits. But, for whatever reason, Rose needs to hold on to that piece of the trauma. Already on edge after seeing Laura slit her throat, this dinner conversation leads Rose to yell at Holly to just fuck off about it. And at least before her ostensible “breakdown,” she had the excuse of needing to be at work as a reason to avoid going to her nephew’s seventh birthday party. Alas, after Dr. Desai orders her to take a week off for her mental health, her Saturday is suddenly free.
And so, looking like a combination of Marcia Gay Harden and her own mother, Kyra Sedgwick, Rose applies some concealer beneath her dark circles and heads to the fête, foolishly thinking it might be a good distraction rather than the demon’s next hunting ground. Complete with a dead animal moment the likes of which has not been as memorable since Fatal Attraction. No matter to the demon, who can’t be concerned with the lengths it will go to damage not only Rose’s credibility, but her personal relationships. Including the one with her fiancé, Trevor (Jessie T. Usher), who quickly shows his ass, so to speak, when it comes to reneging on that “in sickness and in health” caveat. Even stooping so low as to throw back in her face that mental illness runs in the family. Thus, can it be any wonder that Rose turns to her ex, Joel (Kyle Gallner), for some “comfort”? But really, because she needs his police officer access to case files for Laura and Laura’s professor, which leads her to understand that, yes, this is very much the epitome of a vicious circle. Wherein one person kills themselves in front of another each and every time.
What Rose hadn’t bargained for was the “hallucinations” that Laura had also talked about. Seeing the demon in different guises and scenarios that we’re never totally sure are real until we get an “afterward” confirmation that the demon did, in fact, grab hold of her mind, noting very disturbingly toward the end, “Your mind is so inviting.” And that’s, of course, because it’s laden with trauma.
A lead that Joel gives her as he does his own digging into the pattern (from a place of still being in love with her, obviously) prompts Rose to seek out a man named Robert Talley (Rob Morgan), presently in prison for killing his neighbor in front of someone else, so that the witness to the murder would get the curse instead. Not exactly fair, but that’s self-preservation for you. And clearly, the unspoken solution throughout Smile is that Rose ought to just kill herself (or rather, “let” herself be killed)—the same suggestion also present in An American Werewolf in London—in a remote location so that the cycle will break without a witness to see it. But no, Rose is evidently too vain to kill herself and too pure of heart to kill someone else. This is what one could call the embodiment of being caught between a rock and a hard place.
Territory Rose is all too familiar with after what happened with her mother, and having to make a particular decision on that front as well. One that stems from ultimately doing nothing at all, for inaction is a type of decision, too. As Finn’s first feature film (based on a short called Laura Never Sleeps), it’s very palpable that he’s been building toward this movie his entire life, not only because he attended the same high school in Bath, Ohio as gruesome serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer, but because he has studied the horror genre since he was a preadolescent, influenced by every great from John Carpenter to Wes Craven.
For Smile in particular, Finn called out being inspired by Roman Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby (in terms of “not being believed” and increasingly “gaslit”) and Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Cure (for its “nightmarish atmosphere”). What’s more, it goes without saying that It Follows and The Ring are very much present in the narrative. To boot, Todd Haynes’ Safe was another key influence with regard to imbuing the audience with the same level of anxiety as the main character. To that end, the sound editing throughout Smile is absolutely paramount (no reference to the company that distributed Smile intended) to the sense of dread experienced throughout.
Talking of “sound,” perhaps the only major critique of the movie, really, is that Finn didn’t manage to employ the sardonic use of either Lily Allen’s “Smile” or Nat King Cole’s “Smile” during the credits (but definitely not Katy Perry’s “Smile”). Giving either one of the songs the “Jordan Peele treatment” (e.g., “Say My Name” or “I Got 5 On It”). However, as Mia Farrow once said in The Purple Rose of Cairo, “You can’t have everything.”
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