(2022) Smile - One Scary Spine-Chilling Horror Movie

When I first saw the poster of this movie, I somehow felt an eerie feeling looking at the smile of the character. Obviously it intrigued me and made me eager to see the movie once it was released yesterday. As it was classified as horror, I went to see it by myself while my wife skip this one. And how was my experience then? I'll just get right to it.

Brief Story Line

Dr. Rose Cotter (Sosie Bacon - Charlie Says, Here and Now TV series etc) was a psychiatrist working in a hospital under her boss Dr. Desai (Kal Penn - Harold & Kumar trilogy, Designated Survivor TV series etc). After an incident involving one of a new patient she was treating, Rose started to experience same things as that patient where she would even doubt her own mind. This also impacted her relationship with her fiance Trevor (Jessie T. Usher - The Boys TV series, Dangerous Lies etc) and her older sister Holly (Gillian Zinser - 90210 TV series etc).

As she tried to find out ways to save herself, Rose decided to seek help from police detective Joel (Kyle Gallner - Veronica Mars TV series, The Cleansing Hours etc).

So how would the story conclude? You can find out in this scary movie.

End of Brief Story Line

I am actually not a major fan of horror movies especially if they are supernatural type. I only encouraged myself to see this as I thought it is more of a chilling and probably psychological horror. But it turned out that I was a bit wrong. Yes there might be a bit of psychological horror, and indeed it was eerie. However it was really scary due to the horrifying images, not to mention that hair-raising smile. That was some awesome job by the make-up department.

During the whole movie, I found myself to be sitting uncomfortably and feeling terrorized, which I had not felt for a long time. I think it was due to the brilliant sound effect and background music that were truly effective. I know that it was rather typical or even formulaic, but I honestly felt this movie was great in term of frightening us. There were a couple of scenes that shocked me in terrifying manner despite I knew it was going to happen. Normally I would be fine with those as it only gave a bit of surprise. Remarkably though, this time I was so petrified that I even close my eyes for a second during that unsettling climax.

One plus point that I noticed in this movie was the convincing acting by lead cast Sosie Bacon. She was just amazing when portraying a person who had been in terrified state for some time (especially her facial expression & body language). Fun fact: Sosie is the daughter of Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick. The rest of the cast were pretty decent and since they were just there to support, I have no real complaints on them. Oh aside from those names I mentioned above, there were also other characters such as Rose's former therapist Dr. Madeline (Robin Weigert - Deadwood TV series etc), Laura Weaver (Caitlin Stasey - APB TV series etc) and Robert Talley (Rob Morgan - Stranger Things TV series etc).

I think this movie was also good due to the wonderful job of the writer/director Parker Finn which he based on his own short film titled Laura Hasn't Slept. And this time, I kind of agreed with most critics views which were positive. I also felt that the story was fresh and quite original which made me admired Finn even more. The movie has a duration of 115 minutes which was more than enough to torture us. The ending was pretty satisfying, though there was no real surprise. I waited till the closing credit ended but there was no mid or post end credit scenes at all. 

Overall to my personal opinion this was an amazing horror movie. It was really effective in giving us scare with the fantastic sound effect and make up effect plus the good performance of Sosie Bacon. So if you are looking for a movie that would likely scare you, you can certainly give this a try.

Mike's movie moments rating: 4 out of 5 stars