Smile Review: A Cruelly Scary Studio Horror Movie

The alarm went off. The back door is wide open. "Watch your back," are three words no horror movie hero wants to hear from a security system operator or anyone on the other end of the phone line. The order puts Rose (Sosie Bacon), Smiley's increasingly impish heroine, between rock and hard. Even if you do n't want to fiber every creature, you should. And the audience. We are stuck on the cliff, forced to look back at his hesitant gaze, and the camera projection invites him (and us) to examine this disembodied voice.

Laughter abounds in those moments. An acid machine tuned by the devil. It's a movie that sends nervous shocks through the theaters, sending the entire crowd into a synchronized dance routine of toys and popcorn. Turn your nose up at a cheap scarecrow if you must. Hussey has been training that evil machine for a long time. Walk humbly.

The first big scare comes before the delayed opening credits in the psychiatric emergency room where Rose works as a therapist. Trembling with fear, the patient screams that there is an evil force behind him. The distraught woman enters a pure vision, pretending that the Joker has been poisoned, and strategically slits her throat to match her ear-to-ear grin. It's a horrible thing to witness, and Rose is shocked by the incident. He also finds his life slowly being invaded by a smiling psychic spirit: an evil version that only he sees and takes the form of the people he knows and loves.

Fans of the genre will echo David Robert Mitchell's haunting suburban thriller, one of the great horror films of the new millennium. (Here, again, there are images planted at alarming distances, and the empty spaces in the background are feared to soon be filled.) It's not just corpses that cause laughter . The film is based on Blumhouse films such as The Ring , Elm Street , and Drag Me to Hell , as well as Truth or Dare. But with these leftovers she makes enough food; It hardly diminishes to know what motivated them to such effective fear.

In his feature debut, the acclaimed 11-minute short film Laura Never Sleeps , writer-director Parker Finn harnesses the incredible ability to manipulate our nervous system like a roller coaster. He has mastered and almost practiced many tricks of the trade: shooting or turning the world upside down; The transition is so intense and sharp that one seems to be stepping out of a nightmare. There is no mercy in a smile . It vibrates with electric precision. At the same time, Finn changes his strategy, knowing when to take the hard way on our skin. There's a birthday party scene that turns a happy serenade into an eerie echo before delivering a heartbreaking surprise. Legendary character actor Rob Morgan bids for a cameo in a harrowing scene about how false terror leads to violence. His raw emotion is hidden and contagious.

In terms of terrain, everything is very quiet. It has clever and compelling elements, including a love triangle that fills the space between high-octane explosions in a fun house. And finally, as Rose tracks down a series of suicides that the audience has guessed a few reels earlier, the story ultimately becomes one of those terrifying investigations of superheroes. Would anyone be surprised to know that the real monster in this 2022 monster movie is damage itself? With a smile , this spider web summary turns from subtext to open-ended: the danger is exactly PTSD as spread six, and the climax is a confrontation with personal demons. However, Finland does not put the cart before the horse like some horror films of the past decade. He created a very original film to mix visual horror with medical practice.

It can be very interesting. There is a touch of midnight black humor in the mental health professional's efforts to rationalize his supernatural situation. Rose, after all, is in that confusion. What do you say to a patient with post-traumatic vision? Bacon, daughter of Kyra Sedgwick and Kevin Bacon, finds drama and comedy in this trial. Rose has a curious habit of controlling her growing temper, labeling the sheep "sorry" at the end of each tantrum.

Smiling has some serious consequences. He is "apathetic to trauma" and has little interest in restoring comfortable cathartic spaces. Even in his apocalyptic home, his rejection of the Babadook's recovery plans can be discerned. But if this studio surprise is a bitter pill to swallow, sugar-coated with comic art, Finn is happy to fill us all with high-quality fuel. Horror fans at least carry an over-the-top cult following of their own.

Iribaria hits theaters on Friday, September 30 . For more information about AA Dowd's writing, visit her author's page.

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