😐 Smile (2022): The Movie That Thinks Smiling Is Scary


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Let’s start by showing y’all the trailers shall we?

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Non-Spoiler Plot Overview

Dr. Rose Cotter is a psychiatrist whose patient dies in front of her while flashing the most cursed grin since Grandma’s dentures fell in the soup. That’s the beginning of a curse — one that spreads trauma like a cold and kills you within days, usually after stalking you with creepy smiles and hallucinations. It’s The Ring, but instead of a haunted VHS tape, it’s an awkward forced grin.


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Character Rundown

Dr. Rose Cotter (Sosie Bacon): She gives it her all, honestly. You believe she’s unraveling. But she’s trapped in a script that replays itself like a broken trauma mixtape.

Trevor (Jessie T. Usher): Her boyfriend. You’ll forget he exists before the credits roll.

Joel (Kyle Gallner): Rose’s ex. He’s there. He’s helpful-ish.

The Smile Victims: All they do is stare and smile like they’re in a cursed Crest commercial.



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Pacing / Episode Flow

It starts fast and promising, then slides into a loop: smile, hallucination, panic, denial. Rinse. Repeat. Rinse. Repeat. It feels like a horror Groundhog Day but with less punch. Just when things pick up again at the end — too little, too late. The final act tries to be artsy horror, but just left me yawning.


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Pros

Sosie Bacon is trying. Like, actually trying.

One or two effective jumpscares. (That one with the head drop? Got me.)

The idea of a curse tied to unresolved trauma is interesting.

The birthday scene is impressively awkward in a “please make it stop” way.



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Cons

Smiling isn’t scary. The whole premise rides on grins being horrifying. They’re not. They’re just… goofy. The whole thing hinders on if u find Smiling scary, just why though?

It’s trying so hard to be metaphorical that it forgets to be entertaining.

The “curse” is a total Ring knockoff, minus the originality.

Characters make baffling choices just to keep the plot alive.

Way too long — could’ve been an eerie short film. Instead it drags.



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Final Thoughts

Look — Smile isn’t the worst thing ever. But it is deeply overrated. Everyone praised it like it reinvented horror when really it borrowed a bunch of better ideas and stuck a toothy grin on top. The visuals are polished. The acting is decent. But the horror? The tension? The payoff? Meh. This ain’t “elevated horror” — it’s elevated hype.

Make no mistake — this isn’t some A-list masterpiece. It’s B-horror at best, but not in the fun way. And while that might work for some viewers, I was left thinking, “That’s it?”


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Rating

4/10 – Smile? I’d rather not.


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Spoiler Warning 🚨

From here on out, spoilers will smile back. You’ve been warned.


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Spoilers

The “curse” is revealed to pass on through witnessing a death — like trauma as a chain letter.

Rose tries to break the cycle by confronting her inner demons in a surreal third act, but fails.

The creature thing? A weird skinless smile demon that crawls inside people like a Scooby-Doo villain dipped in trauma metaphors.

Joel shows up just in time to witness Rose’s “death,” unknowingly passing the curse on.

The movie ends with the implication: the cycle continues. How original. Anyway the end were done, wait u want more details? Ok

Extended Spoiler: The “Smile Demon’s Big Finale”

In the final act, Dr. Rose decides to isolate herself at her childhood home — the same place her mother died — believing that if no one is around to witness her death, the curse will die with her. Reasonable logic, except this film stopped following reason around the halfway point.

Inside the decrepit house, she’s forced to relive the trauma of her mother’s overdose, which is when the film decides to get real metaphorical. She fights off hallucinations, including a particularly twisted version of her mother screaming at her and blaming her for not calling 911. Rose tries to fight the thing off with logic and fire — literally. She lights the monstrous entity on fire and walks away from the burning house, thinking she’s beaten it.

BUT HAHAHA nope.

That entire victory sequence? Fake. A hallucination. The demon pulled an Inception and made her think she’d won. In reality, she’s still standing in the house, completely in the demon’s grasp. The entity reveals its true form — this gangly, grotesque, skinless thing that opens its face like a Russian nesting doll made of teeth and trauma. Then, in a scene that feels like body horror meets art school thesis, it crawls inside her mouth. Like full-on demon possession via throat dive.

The real kicker? Joel, her ex, shows up just in time to see her — now possessed and smiling — douse herself in gasoline and light herself on fire. Boom. New witness. The curse is passed on.

Cut to black. Roll credits. Congratulations — trauma is eternal, and smiling is still not scary.