I have to report that within the first ten minutes of "Smile," there is a shabbily-dressed female patient meeting with a therapist and this patient is deathly afraid and losing control of her senses. The terrified girl starts convulsing and is out of breath before standing upright with a frozen smile on her face. Then she kills herself in a gory fashion and we get the title credits. My frustration with "Smile" was that a horror film nowadays has to always open with a violent death prior to the opening credits, and this has lingered as the repeated horror movie cliche since 1996's "Scream." I also have to report that once you get past this scene (which is essential to the movie's plot as a whole) you are then in for one scary, psychological, often emotionally bumpy ride that doesn't use the frozen smile as a gimmick.
Sosie Bacon is Dr. Rose Cotter, the creeped-out therapist who witnesses the strange girl's suicide and is ordered to take time off from work (Kal Penn, by the way, plays her sympathetic boss who reminds us of how one other patient didn't have medical insurance. We do need to be reminded of that in this day and age). Rose sees the smiling girl infrequently, either outside her office window or at home near her refrigerator or berating her in the darkness while she sleeps. But she can't get past the traumatic incident and when another patient exhibits that frozen, unwavering smile (albeit briefly), it turns out that it is not an epidemic since he is snapped out of it. But is there an epidemic of frozen smiles out there that lead to suicides? Rose finds that a doctor killed himself in front of the smiling girl, and that indeed it seems to pass on. Rose has her own trauma to deal with the repeated nightmares of the death of her mother, which Rose witnessed at a young age. And then as we get closer to the truth, it leads to an "unexpected" birthday gift from Rose to her nephew (talk about trauma), and the realization that her fiance may be more materialistic than she is. There are also some bitter truths regarding Rose's sister (Gillian Zinser) who couldn't deal with the mother's depression and walked out on the family.
In terms of psychological torment, "Smile" could be read as a film about mental illness and the eventual breakdown of one's frame of mind within a psychotic break. Even while watching it, I wasn't too sure of what could be anticipated or how Rose was going to combat this demonic apparition. "Smile" rises above its familiar "It Follows"-type horror trappings thanks to the intense shadings of Sosie Bacon (Kevin Bacon's daughter) as Rose and we start to wonder if any of this is real or just mere hallucinations. Bacon makes us care about her plight and, once we discover the truth of her horrendous, spiraling-out-of-control situation, we hope she can recover and get back on her feet. Her spectacular performance rockets this film way past the acceptable parameters of most horror fare.
Aside from the viciously bloody opening, writer-director Parker Finn opts out of traditional blood and gore and uses it intermittently. He focuses on atmosphere that includes overcast skies and surroundings that feel claustrophobic and the occasional rotating camera that flips upside down, indicative of a smile becoming a frown (Finn also infuses sympathy for Rose and every scene features Rose - we go along for this terrifying trip with her). Coupled with a vibrating, almost Satanic music score or grinder of some kind and a few jump scares that are few and far in between, "Smile" gave me major goosebumps and the ending gave me major shivers that resulted in me not grinning from ear to ear.
