Starring: Sosie Bacon, Kyle Gallner, Caitlin Stasey, Robin Weigert, Jessie T Usher, Kal Penn, Judy Reyes, Rob Morgan
Distributor: Paramount
Runtime: 116 mins. Reviewed in Oct 2022
Reviewer: Fr Peter Malone msc
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A young doctor is overcome when a patient kills herself in front of her, smiling. The doctor continues to investigate the case, discovering a whole series of similar cases, and is more personally caught up in them.
Smile is a beguiling word. And many smiles themselves are beguiling. But this is not the kind of smile in the title of this film. Rather, there is that other aspect of a smile, a grin, sometimes a fixed grin which might look immediately cheerful but is ultimately sinister.
There are some suggestions that Smile is something of a horror film. That is not quite exact. Rather, it can be described as ‘eerie’, atmospheric, with some dramatic and grim moments, moments of blood and gore, but the film is more of a psychological portrait of a young woman, becoming more and more disturbed. (This description of ‘eerie’ does more justice to this kind of film which can be seen by a wider audience than devotees of horror, blood and gore.)
The central character is Rose Cotter, a young doctor – therapist – who works in a busy hospital, interviewing patients with mental problems. She is called back to interview a disturbed young woman, a PhD student whose professor has killed himself in front of her. Then, with a grimacing grin, rather than a smile, she kills herself in front of the doctor.
Cotter is played by Sosie Bacon (daughter of Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick), an intense young woman who is disturbed by memories of her mother killing herself. She interacts with her sister who lives a comfortable life, clashing with her about their mother. She also has a fiance, a comparatively passive character rather than understanding and supportive.
Because Cotter is so preoccupied with what has happened to her, she wants to investigate the background of the doctor who killed himself, visiting his widow, upsetting her, and then going to visit her former boyfriend, a police detective, and asking him to get information, photos…
What ensues is the discovery of a whole chain of such deaths, the smile, the suicides, and seemingly the passing on of a curse. And the suggestion is of the paranormal, something of the presence of an evil entity that is continually passed on.
Ultimately, the doctor has to confront her past, revisit the family house, experience what happened with her mother. And an unexpected (or perhaps expected) finale.
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