Horror movies have two speeds: Slasher and terrifyingly intense. At the risk of sleeping with the lights on for the next forever, we’re looking at the latter.
With Halloween fast approaching, Moviefone is counting down the most terrifying horror movies that were released between 2015 and now.
Robert Eggers’ ‘Nosferatu’ is a gothic tale of obsession between a haunted young woman (Lily-Rose Depp) and the terrifying vampire (Bill Skarsgård) infatuated with her, causing untold horror in its wake.
An American nun (Sydney Sweeney) embarks on a new journey when she joins a remote convent in the Italian countryside. However, her warm welcome quickly turns into a living nightmare when she discovers her new home harbours a sinister secret and unspeakable horrors.
When an American family is invited to spend the weekend at the idyllic country estate of a charming British family they befriended on vacation, what begins as a dream holiday soon warps into a snarled psychological nightmare.
In town for a job interview, a young woman (Georgina Campbell) arrives at her Airbnb late at night only to find that it has been mistakenly double-booked and a strange man (Bill Skarsgård) is already staying there. Against her better judgement, she decides to stay the night anyway.
A young couple (Anya Taylor-Joy and Nicholas Hoult) travels to a remote island to eat at an exclusive restaurant where the chef (Ralph Fiennes) has prepared a lavish menu, with some shocking surprises.
Still scarred by the trauma he endured as a child at the Overlook Hotel, Dan Torrance (Ewan McGregor) faces the ghosts of the past when he meets Abra (Kyliegh Curran), a courageous teen who desperately needs his help — and who possesses a powerful extrasensory ability called the “shine”.
After witnessing a bizarre, traumatic incident involving a patient, Dr. Rose Cotter (Sosie Bacon) starts experiencing frightening occurrences that she can’t explain.
When twin brothers (Theo James) find a mysterious wind-up monkey, a series of outrageous deaths tear their family apart. Twenty-five years later, the monkey begins a new killing spree forcing the estranged brothers to confront the cursed toy.
When a group of friends discover how to conjure spirits using an embalmed hand, they become hooked on the new thrill, until one of them goes too far and unleashes terrifying supernatural forces.
In pursuit of a serial killer (Nicolas Cage), an FBI agent (Maika Monroe) uncovers a series of occult clues that she must solve to end his terrifying killing spree.
When all but one child from the same class mysteriously vanish on the same night at exactly the same time, a community is left questioning who or what is behind their disappearance.
A fading celebrity (Demi Moore) decides to use a black market drug, a cell-replicating substance that temporarily creates a younger, better version of herself (Margaret Qualley).
Several friends travel to Sweden to study as anthropologists a summer festival that is held every ninety years in the remote hometown of one of them. What begins as a dream vacation in a place where the sun never sets, gradually turns into a dark nightmare as the mysterious inhabitants invite them to participate in their disturbing festive activities.
Chris (Daniel Kaluuya) and his girlfriend Rose (Allison Williams) go upstate to visit her parents for the weekend. At first, Chris reads the family’s overly accommodating behavior as nervous attempts to deal with their daughter’s interracial relationship, but as the weekend progresses, a series of increasingly disturbing discoveries lead him to a truth that he never could have imagined.
Two young missionaries (Sophie Thatcher and Chloe East) are forced to prove their faith when they knock on the wrong door and are greeted by a diabolical Mr. Reed (Hugh Grant), becoming ensnared in his deadly game of cat-and-mouse.
In a small town in Maine, seven children known as The Losers Club come face to face with life problems, bullies and a monster that takes the shape of a clown called Pennywise.
Following the death of the Leigh family matriarch, Annie (Toni Collette) and her children uncover disturbing secrets about their heritage. Their daily lives are not only impacted, but they also become entangled in a chilling fate from which they cannot escape, driving them to the brink of madness.
(Left) Rosemarie DeWitt in ‘Smile 2’. Photo: Paramount Pictures. (Right) Director Parker Finn on the set of ‘Smile 2’. Photo: Paramount Pictures.
Moviefone recently had the pleasure of speaking with Rosemarie DeWitt and director Parker Finn about their work on ‘Smile 2’, coming up with the idea for the sequel, Skye and Elizabeth’s relationship, working with Naomi Scott, creating the music and the dance sequences, shooting the mirror scene, perfecting the smile, collaborating on set, and Finn’s plans for a possible ‘Smile 3’.
You can read the full interview below or click on the video player above to watch our interviews.
Director Parker Finn on the set of ‘Smile 2’. Photo: Paramount Pictures.
Moviefone: To begin with, Parker, coming off the success of the first film, did you always have ideas for a sequel and how did you land on focusing on a pop star?
Parker Finn: Well, I made the first film to be able to stand on its own. I had no expectations or anticipations of a sequel at the time. But when those conversations began, I knew that if I was going to return to write and direct a sequel, that I needed to really take a swing and do something that could really hang a smile on a new main character who had some real thematic depth to explore and certain emotionality that felt sort of ripe and prime for a ‘Smile’ movie. So, some of those early ideas I threw away in the trash because I felt like they were too obvious to go with. I wanted to challenge myself to do something unexpected. I had been a big fan of pop music for a long time, but I was also fascinated by this. I think we’re at this moment of peak relationship with fame, celebrity, fandoms, and some of these pop stars are elevated to godlike status, and I was very fascinated about the real human being behind that. These women who are expected to always be playing this persona, always be on, and always be performing. I wanted to go behind the scenes with a character who was one of the most famous people in the world, but also one of the loneliest people in the world. That felt like a great starting place for a ‘Smile’ movie.
Rosemarie DeWitt in ‘Smile 2’. Photo: Paramount Pictures.
MF: Rosemarie, what was your first reaction to the screenplay and the way it continues the mythology from the first film?
Rosemarie DeWitt: When I got the screenplay, I hadn’t seen the first one. I try to protect myself from horror, not run right towards it, but I liked it. I just liked it on the page. I was like, “Oh, I’m really curious about it. I don’t see a lot of things where we get to look at the behind the scenes.” You watch the documentaries of a pop star and their life, and then you wonder, especially if they’re young when they start, “What was that mom thinking?” You know what I mean? There are so many dangers lurking in this environment. So, I was curious about that. Not that it was a deep dive on it, but just to even get to explore the dynamic was interesting to me. Then, I like a challenge, so doing something that the audience had some hope and expectation for. I like the feeling of having pressure, being a pressure cooker and wanting to deliver something. Sometimes when you do, let’s say a subtle indie, you’re like, “Will anyone see it?” But when you do a big movie that the audience is waiting for the next one, it’s fun to try to get it right.
Naomi Scott in ‘Smile 2’. Photo: Paramount Pictures.
MF: Parker, can you talk about casting Naomi Scott as Skye, and was there a particular pop star that inspired the character?
PF: Definitely. I mean, when I wrote the character, what I was envisioning in my head was certainly, at least for the persona, the onstage, the musical performance, the costumes, I was looking at everyone from Lady Gaga to Rihanna. I really loved looking at earlier in each of their careers when they were maybe around their mid-20s. Also, women like FKA Twigs and Olivia Rodrigo, Sia, and Tate McRae. There was a lot of women that we were looking at. I got my hands on every documentary, interview and essay that I could. Certainly, there were some inspirations, from Britney Spears to Whitney Houston. There was a lot of stories, but I wanted to make sure that Skye felt like a whole unique creation as well. Naomi was a perfect storm for this character. She instantly had this gravitas where I believe her when she puts on the skin of this pop star, but then also can go to incredibly raw and human dramatic places. She also really understands how to play the moments that are funny in the film, just as well as the moments that are terrifying. She sings and she dances. She sings all the original songs. She performs the choreography. Naomi just really had all the X factor for this role, and it was a dream getting to work with her.
(L to R) Rosemarie DeWitt and Naomi Scott in ‘Smile 2’. Photo: Paramount Pictures.
MF: Rosemarie, can you talk about the “momager” relationship Elizabeth has with Skye and did you create a backstory for the characters and their mother and daughter dynamic?
RD: It’s funny because the very first scene we shot together, we met a day or two before just to get to know each other. I remember being like, “Oh, shoot, I really like her.” You know what I mean? I knew we were starting with the very last scene in their relationship, which was the big fight, and it was kind of great that I could just project onto her all these kinds of horrible things that I had to sacrifice because in a lot of genre pieces those are a mislead. You’re not often playing the truth of the situation. You’re playing the truth of what the audience needs to believe in that moment, and then they must believe that I killed myself or that she killed me. You must go to the darkest spot. So, it was kind of great that we weren’t madly in love with each other on day one, because the more I worked with her, she’s like a ray of sunshine. She’s playing this very fraught, narcissistic drug-addicted person with this really tortured past, but she’s really the opposite. You know what I mean? She’s just so happy and kind. So, it was almost the opposite. I worked a lot more with my imagination building. Also in horror, I think we get to work with a little bit of our shadows. Maybe I got to look at a little bit of the dark underbelly of fame, and how much is enough? What is she pushing for? Why am I doing press right now? What am I trying to get out of it? You get to ask yourself some good questions.
Naomi Scott in ‘Smile 2’. Photo: Paramount Pictures.
MF: Rosemarie, what was it like working with Naomi on that relationship?
RD: It’s interesting. I’ve played a lot of moms. I’ve played this relationship quite a bit. But for me, with her, it was less about seeing her as my daughter. It’s probably appropriate for the role and more about seeing her as this pop star machine, because it really did kind of take that commitment on the actor’s part to be dancing, to be singing, to be doing the emotion, to be screaming over and over. It was exhausting. I felt really, weirdly, I was the opposite in real life than my character where I would kind of be like, “Didn’t we get it? Can we move on? This poor sweetheart needs to go rest. Let’s let her go home and shake it off for tomorrow.” But in the story, I had to keep driving her more like, “This is what they want from you. You can’t give up.” It’s really nuts to think that we push people that hard for the fans.
Naomi Scott in ‘Smile 2’. Photo: Paramount Pictures.
MF: Parker, can you talk about creating Skye’s music and choreographing the dance sequences?
PF: I knew that when I was approaching this, I didn’t want the pop star element to just feel tacked on or something that was happening in the periphery or just like a hat that the movie was wearing. I wanted to make sure that this was really part and parcel of the character. This is her story. This is her life. This is her world. So, for me, it was incredibly important to build credibility around Skye Riley as this pop star. I wanted to sort of blur the lines between fiction and reality and make up a pop star that feels real, like she could exist in our world, and hopefully when people leave the movie theater, someone they wish existed in our world. So, we set about creating the five original songs for the film. We worked with a couple of music producers. One was Alexis Idarose Kesselman, who wrote and produced the music for four of the songs in the film. Then, we worked with these music producers that go by Take a Daytrip who did one of the other songs. But it was exciting to get to try to build this from scratch. Then, of course, my costume designer, Alexis Forte, we were looking at what was happening in pop right now with costumes. My choreographer, Celia Rowlson-Hall, was somebody who had worked on everything from avant-garde art pieces to Old Navy commercials. It was about finding something that felt pop with a capital P, but also had this sense of artistic movement to it that we knew we were going to also bring into the film in a scary way as well. Such a wonderful collaboration with a lot of people to bring this pop star to life.
Naomi Scott in ‘Smile 2’. Photo: Paramount Pictures.
MF: Rosemarie, what was it like for you to shoot the mirror sequence?
RD: Yeah, it’s funny, those moments, because the stunt coordinators, everybody’s so good at their job. That stuff was easy because they just tell you to come over and hit it here with this part of your hand and it’s going to be sugar glass, so you’re going to grab a piece. What was harder was, I think just sort of the psychological, having an eye taped shut all day and just feeling that claustrophobia because you had to keep the prosthetic on over it. Then just being drenched in blood and the way people react to you. Having people for a couple of days just keep recoiling from you, made me by day two say, “I’m just going to lay on the floor and wait until you’re ready for me, because I’m freaking everybody out. There’s cold, wet, fake blood inside my bra. I think I’m just going to sit still.” A lot of this stuff’s technical because Parker knows what it takes to scare the audience. So, a stab needs to be in a certain place at a certain angle. The smile must be at a certain tilt. So weirdly, that was almost like playing notes, but the rest of it, you’re like, “Ooh, everybody’s scared of me.”
Ray Nicholson in ‘Smile 2’. Photo: Paramount Pictures.
MF: Parker, can you expand on what Rosemarie just said? Did you have a specific way that you wanted the actors to smile?
PF: Well, I always cast towards the performance and then I can coach them towards the smile rather than the other way around. But there’s a few tricks that we use that involves obviously the too wide smile itself. The trick is all about the eyes and the dead look in the eyes. We do a bit of a Kubrick stare thing where there’s a bit of a tilt of the head so that you’re looking from underneath the brow. When you combine that with the tools of filmmaking, how we frame it, the sound design, everything, it creates an unsettling effect.
Naomi Scott and Director Parker Finn on the set of ‘Smile 2’. Photo: Paramount Pictures.
MF: Rosemarie, what was your experience like working with Parker as a director on set?
RD: It’s interesting because I do love to collaborate, and then sometimes when I’m not in my element, I like to be directed. Because horror is not my genre, I was just really deferring to him. What makes this scarier? What does this scene need? If anything, the thing that was hard, and they did scale it back a little bit was when you play on so many screens around the world, because it is a franchise, you explain things to the audience a lot more because they’re watching it in many different languages. The only thing I kept saying to him was, “Do I really have to say we have to go to the label party again?” You know what I mean? I had to keep repeating things. I’m like, “I feel like I’ve said it. Didn’t I say it?” But I think because it’s horror, you must keep reorienting the audience to the story because their nervous system pulls them out of the story and then you bring them back in. So, you always must keep reminding them. So that for me was a challenge. I like it to all feel real.
Naomi Scott in ‘Smile 2’. Photo: Paramount Pictures.
MF: Finally, Parker, the ending of the film might lead audiences to think that ‘Smile 3’ will feature an Entity pandemic. Can you talk about your plans for another film?
PF: Well, you’re asking the right questions. I was hoping those questions would be asked at the very end of the film. I felt that there was a very interesting meta commentary about celebrity platforms and celebrity influence, this idea of how we live in this time now where individuals can have such an effect on so many people instantaneously. So, there was something fun to play with there with ‘Smile’. Of course, if ‘Smile’ were to continue, I think there’s a lot of interesting directions to go with. I’d want to make sure, again, that the way in feels just as fresh and surprising as what we did between ‘Smile’ and ‘Smile 2’ to make something that really feels worthwhile to have the audience come back. So, lots of ideas, but that’s all I’m going to say for now.
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What is the plot of ‘Smile 2’?
About to embark on a new world tour, global pop sensation Skye Riley (Naomi Scott) begins experiencing increasingly terrifying and inexplicable events. Overwhelmed by the escalating horrors and the pressures of fame, Skye is forced to face her dark past to regain control of her life before it spirals out of control.
Who is in the cast of ‘Smile 2’?
Naomi Scott as Skye Riley
Rosemarie DeWitt as Elizabeth Riley
Lukas Gage as Lewis Fregoli
Miles Gutierrez-Riley as Joshua
Peter Jacobson as Morris
Ray Nicholson as Paul Hudson
Dylan Gelula as Gemma
Raúl Castillo as Darius Bravo
Kyle Gallner as Joel
Naomi Scott stars in Paramount Pictures Presents a Temple Hill Production of a Parker Finn Film ‘Smile 2’.
Naomi Scott in ‘Smile 2’. Photo: Paramount Pictures.
Opening in theaters on October 18th, ‘Smile 2’ looks to prove itself worthy on the horror sequel front by shaking up the character list but keeping its core concept –– of a terrifying, demonic curse that leaves victims with a rictus grin –– intact.
With one character crossing over (Kyle Gallner’s Joel) to keep the demonic parasite spreading, the focus this time settles on Skye Riley (Naomi Scott), a Taylor Swift-alike pop star already struggling with some serious issues of her own.
Ray Nicholson in ‘Smile 2’. Photo: Paramount Pictures.
How much you enjoy ‘Smile 2’ might depend on your appreciation for the 2022 original and, in a change from how that movie derived the majority of its scares, your stomach for noisy jump scares.
Because make no mistake –– there are a lot of those in this movie, and while the first couple are effective, the law of diminishing returns quickly kicks in. It’s also a little disappointing that, despite finding a fresh target ripe with possibilities, the sequel also suffers from feeling like a repeat of the first film, albeit in ways we won’t spoil here.
Still, Finn finds some interesting angles on the tropes we’ve come to expect from the ‘Smile’ films and star Naomi Scott gives a truly committed performance, less scream queen and more trauma queen as Skye goes through a nightmare of very personal proportions.
Script and Direction
Naomi Scott and Director Parker Finn on the set of ‘Smile 2’. Photo: Paramount Pictures.
With Parker Finn returning to write and direct, he’s managed to maintain his vision from the first movie. The ethereal, unseen parasitic demon creature has managed to make it to pop star Skye, and it’s her slow breakdown that powers the film.
On the verge of a huge tour, Skye finds herself plunged into a situation where she can’t figure out what is real and what isn’t, and no-one is likely to believe her. The script goes to some fun places, building a suitably creepy atmosphere and finding inventive ways for Skye to be isolated from those around her.
Director Parker Finn on the set of ‘Smile 2’. Photo: Paramount Pictures.
As a director, Finn has a real knack for finding great angles and the film looks superb –– even if he might want to sometimes lay off the upside down shots. One or two is a trademark style, but the sheer number of them here becomes wearing.
But he gets good work out of the cast and keeps a careful hand on how it all develops. One sequence in particular, which features Skye’s backup dancers (we won’t say exactly how) is one of the eeriest scenes in a movie this year to date.
Performances
Naomi Scott in ‘Smile 2’. Photo: Paramount Pictures.
Naomi Scott as Skye Riley
Scott has been better than some of her past movies have deserved, and here she plays Skye with just the right amount of creeping desperation and paranoia. Whether she’s glugging water to keep a handle on her past addictions.
While Skye isn’t ever completely sympathetic, Scott does imbue her with some much-needed personality, and you’re intrigued to see where her story goes.
Rosemarie DeWitt in ‘Smile 2’. Photo: Paramount Pictures.
DeWitt has a somewhat thankless character to play in the pushy but charismatic stage mother who loves her daughter but also has a driving interest in keeping the cash flow going. Yet the actor does the best she can with a small role and is creepily convincing later in the movie when Skye begins to see increasingly dark visions.
Peter Jacobson in ‘Smile 2’. Photo: Paramount Pictures.
As a character with a connection to one of the entity’s past victims, Morris has a personal stake in taking it down –– and might just have come up with a way to do so. While Jacobson is mostly tasked with delivering exposition, he does it well and is believable.
Supporting cast
Miles Gutierrez Riley in ‘Smile 2’. Photo: Paramount Pictures.
Much of the rest of the cast are playing smaller supporting roles, but a few do make an impact. Dylan Gelula is good value as Gemma, one of Skye’s friends who has been estranged from her for a year or so while the pop star, after suffering serious injuries from a car accident, dived into drugs and drink. There’s a sparky interplay between the two women and their shared history is suitably evoked through dialogue alone.
Miles Gutierrez-Riley also works well as Jacob, an assistant to Skye and her mother who provides the majority of the laughs with which Finn leavens the horror. And spare a thought for the various, mostly uncredited people who must sport wide, creepy smiles as the different incarnations of the demonic presence.
Final Thoughts
(Right) Naomi Scott in ‘Smile 2’. Photo: Paramount Pictures.
While it does try to play with the format a little, Finn here mostly plays the hits, albeit with a nice line in understanding what made ‘Smile’ work. It’s not a perfect horror movie, occasionally relying on lazy scare tactics, but it’s a worthwhile follow-up to the original and one that also has a nice line in self-aware laughter to keep things interesting.
While we won’t directly discuss how it all ends, the finale does posit some interesting questions for where the world of ‘Smile’ could go next –– and we’d be interested in seeing exactly how the writer/director gets himself out of the corner into which he’s seemingly painted himself.
‘Smile 2’ receives 7 out of 10 stars.
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What’s the story of ‘Smile 2’?
About to embark on a new world tour, global pop sensation Skye Riley (Naomi Scott) begins experiencing increasingly terrifying and inexplicable events. Overwhelmed by the escalating horrors and the pressures of fame, Skye is forced to face her dark past to regain control of her life before it spirals out of control.
He’s now teaming up with Parker Finn –– the writer/director behind ‘Smile’, the biggest horror hit of 2022 –– to develop a new take on Andrzej Żuławski’s cult 1981 horror movie ‘Possession’.
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What’s the story of ‘Possession’?
1981’s ‘Possession’. Photo: Gaumont.
Written by Żuławski and Frederic Tuten, ‘Possession’ is set in West Berlin and stars Sam Neill as a spy who returns home from the field to his wife (Isabella Adjani) and son.
All is not quiet on the marital front as the wife asks for a divorce and the couple next descends into a destructive cycle that not only includes infidelity and neglect but spins into murder, a tentacled alien creature and doppelgangers.
The movie was Żuławski’s meditation on marriage, written as a reaction to his own crumbling relationship. An international co-production between France and Germany, ‘Possession’ not a hit nor particularly well-received when it was released, but it gained a cult status for the filmmaker’s full commitment to the premise and went through a re-appraisal.
Who will produce the new ‘Possession’?
Caitlin Stasey in Paramount Pictures Presents in Association with Paramount Players A Temple Hill Production ‘Smile.’
Right now, the project is at a very early stage. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Finn and Pattinson have been sending the pitch out to various companies and the likes of A24, Netflix, Paramount, Sony and Warner Bros. are all interested. Meetings are scheduled for this week, and more companies are expected to enter the fray.
Reactions to whatever concept Finn and Pattinson have cooked up have been strong, though there are apparently discussions ongoing about how to market the movie. If we’re honest, A24 feels like it might be the best fit for this one, even though Finn’s first-look deal with Paramount may give that studio an edge.
Finn broke out big with ‘Smile’, which starred Sosie Bacon in the story of a psychiatrist who becomes convinced she’s the target of an unnatural entity that causes its victims to display a rictus grin.
The director has already shot sequel ‘Smile 2’, which is in post-production and will be in theaters on October 18th.
While Pattinson hasn’t yet decided if he’ll star in the new movie –– you’ve got to figure that would be a big selling point for any studio –– he’s also got a relatively open schedule right now.
He’s scheduled to work on the sequel to ‘The Batman’ next year, but his next film to be released in Boon Jong Ho’s sci-fi comedy drama ‘Mickey 17’, which will be in theaters on January 31st, 2025.
Robert Pattinson in ‘Superpowered: The DC Story.’ Photograph by Courtesy of Max/Warner Bros.
Opening in theaters on September 30th, ‘Smile’ is the latest attempt to mine horror from creeping tension and the idea of a shared experience.
It’s also one of those movies that benefits from knowing as little as possible, so we’ll say it’s worth watching for horror hounds, but doesn’t quite live up to its premise or its initial scenes.
Drawing on the sort of subjects he tackled in the short ‘Laura Hasn’t Slept’ that he made before this feature directorial debut (the short’s star, Caitlin Stasey, makes the jump to the movie with a similarly troubled character carrying the same name as ‘Laura Hasn’t Slept’), writer/director Parker Finn makes an impressive, but mixed first stab at longer form moviemaking.
‘Smile’s focus is Dr. Rose Cotter (Sosie Bacon), a therapist whose own life is already a little tough. She’s not sleeping well, having nightmares about discovering her mother dead when she was young, and despite having set up a seemingly perfect life with fiancé Trevor (‘The Boys’ Jessie T. Usher), Rose is exhausted and feeling the emotional strain of a job that has her encountering distressed and mentally unwell people on a daily basis.
Caitlin Stasey in Paramount Pictures Presents in Association with Paramount Players A Temple Hill Production ‘Smile.’
Yet a horrifying encounter with a newly arrived patient (Stasey’s Laura Weaver, in a state of shock after a college professor killed himself in front of her), Rose is even more unsettled. Laura commits suicide in the bloodiest way possible, a creepy smile slapped on her face after previously babbling about seeing strange visions.
Soon, Rose is disturbed by weird encounters of her own – someone appears to break into her home, but the police can find nothing. Another patient displays the same intense, freakish smile. And then her life really starts to go wrong when she attends her nephew’s birthday party, and the gift she has brought is brutally different from the one she wrapped (trigger warning here for cat owners).
Estranged from friends and family, Rose turns to her ex, police officer Joel (Kyle Gallner) and starts to really dig into the mystery of this supernatural phenomenon. Can she figure out how to escape her apparent suicidal fate?
Feeling a little like a mash-up of ‘It Follows’ and the original ‘Ringu’ movie (but despite a promising opening, never quite reaching either film’s level), Finn’s horror outing is an audacious, yet simple premise and features a haunted performance by Bacon (yes, the daughter of Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick, whose credits include ‘Mare of Easttown’ and ‘The Last Summer’).
(L to R) Sosie Bacon and Kyle Gallner star in Paramount Pictures Presents in Association with Paramount Players A Temple Hill Production ‘Smile.’
She’s endlessly watchable as she becomes twitchier and more isolated, vulnerable and yet tough when the moment truly calls for it.
Surrounding her are Gallner, who gives his all to the cop character, and Gillian Zinser, who is able to switch between sharp and sympathetic as Rose’s older sister Holly, who has washed her hair of her family by starting her own.
She’s angry at Rose for holding on to the old family home, site of so much tragedy, but if you don’t think the dilapidated old house in the middle of nowhere isn’t going to factor into the plot, you’ve clearly never seen a horror movie.
Usher has less to do playing the initially supportive and then distant partner, while Robin Weigert and Kal Penn offer stalwart work as her therapist and boss respectively.
Kal Penn stars in Paramount Pictures Presents in Association with Paramount Players A Temple Hill Production ‘Smile.’
The script doesn’t always support the committed cast, dipping into ridiculous levels of horror cliché that will have you grinning in a way that the filmmakers probably didn’t intend. And there is too often an overreliance on the sort of jump scares that we’ve seen hundreds of times. Given how creative early scenes are, it’s sad to see a degeneration later on into the school of quiet-quiet-LOUD horror directing.
It’s all the more frustrating, because Finn and cinematographer Charlie Sarroff conjure some effective visuals to draw us into Rose’s state of mind, keeping close quarters with her at times while widening out for other shots to lull us into a false sense of security.
Slowly rotating camera shots also add to the unsettling feeling, though while they work to begin with, the repetitive use eventually undercuts their power.
And the sound team, meanwhile, including composer Cristobal Tapia de Veer, are worthy of particular note, since ‘Smile’ features one of the most atmospheric, unnerving sonic landscapes of any recent movie. With the dial set close to “discordant”, it’s helpful to both bring us into Rose’s point of view and keep us on edge, waiting for the next scare to appear.
Jessie T. Usher stars in Paramount Pictures Presents in Association with Paramount Players A Temple Hill Production ‘Smile.’
Finally, the effects largely work, digital tricks mixing with typically successful practical visions from Tom Woodruff Jr. and Alec Gillis, who bring to life all manner of freakish creations without becoming ludicrous.
This is very much a film of two halves, the build-up full of decent creep-factor and tension ratcheting (with a few issues from the script and one or two dodgier performances) before the mystery deepens and the movie sadly swings between dull stretches of exposition and a truly giggle-worthy descent into entirely expected terror territory.
While it explores ideas of holding onto trauma and how we deal with it, the movie never quite digs far beneath the surface, and that can lead to some unfortunately problematic moments that verge on exploitative.
Yet for all its concerns, this is an ambitious and confident debut from a filmmaker who shows real promise if he can curb his more traditional instincts and escape leaning too hard on the initial ideas that they crumble under the pressure.
Not a full on beam, then, more a quiet smile for ‘Smile’.
‘Smile’ receives 3 out of 5 stars.
Sosie Bacon stars in Paramount Pictures Presents in Association with Paramount Players A Temple Hill Production ‘Smile.’
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