Rating of
3/4
Put On a Happy Face
Chris Kavan - wrote on 12/08/22
If 2022 has taught me anything about horror, it's that sometimes simple works just as well as more contemporary indie horror. Smile continues the trend with a simple setup - a curse that follows you for a week (or less) that manifests itself in people only the victim can see that gives you the world's most unnerving smile. It does this with strangers, people they know and even those long dead - and seems to revel in the trauma it not only causes but passes on. You see, in order to continue it forces each victim to commit a horrendous suicide in front of another person - passing on the curse in the process.
Rose Cotter (Sosie Bacon), herself a trauma psychologist, witnesses a young woman (Caitlin Stasey) kill herself with a smile on her face and her own life begins to unravel. She tries and fails to confide in her fiancé, Trevor (Jessie T. Usher) and her sister, Holly (Gillian Zinser) even as her own past trauma involving her own mother's death bubbles up to the surface. Her behavior worries her own ex-psychologist (Robin Weigert) and her boss (Kal Penn) but even as she seems to fall deeper and deeper into this curse, she seeks out the cause, trying to uncover previous victims. This leads her to Joel (Kyle Gallner), ex-boyfriend and police officer, who seems to be the only one willing to hear out her theories and uncovering a pattern that goes much further back than either one anticipated.
Smile works combining your horror-staple jump scares (not too many - just enough) and a good atmosphere that has you always questioning what is real and what is being projected by the curse. While I would have preferred a bit more exploration on the curse, the film leaves the door open for more and maybe we can get some concrete answers, though maybe it's one of those where leaving things more open makes for a more frightening experience - one that you make on your own.
If there is one thing that drags this film down, it's that our main character seems hell-bent on acting as delusional as some of her patients, and doesn't do herself any favors by presenting a case of "I'm totally not crazy". I get early on she doesn't have much to go on, but when she finally gets evidence of what is happening, she still can't pull herself together and leads to a predictable outcome. For someone with obvious training in the mental health field, you would think she, of all people, would know how to deal - but, alas, off the deep end we go.
Smile is still mostly satisfying and I can see why it did so well with audiences. The best decision Paramount made all year was to change this from a streaming-only film to a theatrical release - because it made a good chunk of change and was another great horror title in a strong year for the genre.
