Smile 2022

There aren't a lot of horror films that want to compete with H-Ends this season, but here's one of them.

It's kinda like that Ring curse. And kinda like the It Follows curse. The smile demon (for lack of a better name) drives you mad, then you smile at someone and kill yourself in front of them, traumatizing them into the same curse. Also, is he even a thing? Can he be defeated? Or is it all psychological? After all, there sure are a lot of dream sequences. And jump scares.

Sounds pretty standard, huh? Well, it is. However, I never felt that it was bad at any point. It had the cliches. Sometimes, those dreaded cliches aren't too bad. Our lead does a good job of descending into madness. Gee whiz, it sure must be fun for actors to play someone who is unraveling. It also had vibes of that recent flick Unsane. Probably the hospital setting, in addition to the mental breakdowns.

So the cast is good, the score is grating, and it earns its R-rating. It's fun to try to figure out the rules along the way. How does the curse work? How can we beat it? I think it could have some interesting mechanics that could work in an rpg. Curses like these are comparable to a virus in some ways. Transmission, symptoms, durations, treatments... Yet at the same time, I'm glad it doesn't go too in depth trying to figure out the rules, so the audience can be left to use that imagination thingy.

On the walk to the theater, I was reminded of my previous walk home from the theater. I saw two people fucking under a bridge. 🙂

#Review