Smile

As a fan of scary movies I believe they can be a perfect vehicle to tackle real world issues, and bring to life societies deepest fears. That said, I also think that they are extremely delicate and easy to screw up. There is an entire franchise built off of the bad and overused horror movie tropes. Smile was something that intrigued and creeped me out from the beginning. The marketing for this film was very well done leaving audiences with an unsettled feeling that only encouraged horror fans to go see it. Having now seen the movie I can say that the trailer was better.

At the beginning this seemed to be a film that was going to have a deep, internal storyline dealing with trauma and how our personal trauma can affect others. That could be me giving the writer far too much credit but it was set up very well. One of the ending scenes had the main protagonist overcome her childhood trauma to rid herself of the suicidal curse she has been dealing with for most of the movie…and then the movie kept going. Killing any chance of this film being a triumph. Instead the ending was defeatist, basic and uninspired. It seemed that instead of creating a story that could really be used to shed light on how trauma affects people, as well as strengthening its spot in an oversaturated genre; the writer simply relied on basic genre tropes and creep factor to attempt to carry the movie. There were also too many relationships that were set up and simply not paid off, the nephew, sister and Trevor were all kind of cast to the wind.

Story aside; the use of lighting, camera angles and color allowed for a classic horror movie experience. It wasn’t overly gorey but if blood and broken necks make you queasy then this is going to be an uncomfortable experience. Nothing better than anticipating a jump scare and when it comes hearing the grown man next to you scream like a little bitch. Overall the audience seemed thoroughly creeped by the movie and if that was all the creator wanted then mission accomplished because he most certainly didn’t affect anybody.

There was an aggressive overuse of jumpscares, literally every 10 minutes there was at least 1 jumpscare and in the third act there were several in a row. The use of jumpscares in horror movies can be a powerful tactic, but (much like the slow motion in Zach Snyder’s Justice League) when overused it sucks all impact out of not only the effect but the story. As far as the camera work goes there was an overuse of upside down city shots. He didn’t use the rule of three and there was no narrative reason for the shot at all. Once again just because something looks cool once doesn’t mean it look good 50 times (not so subtle shade thrown at Zach Snyder again).

In addition to the abandonment of the story and the overuse of scary movie 101 jump scares, there was simply too much filler. At least 30 minutes of this film could have been cut. The set up would have been perfect had they known when to end the movie but as they kept going the entire first act went on too long.

Overall I think the film on its own was mediocre and as a horror movie it's a wasted opportunity. It genuinely could have been one of the greats but a writer's inability to find his own story killed the film. The acting was wonderful and all of the actors fully committed to their parts, but they couldn’t save the poor storytelling. The film earns a solid 5/10.