Smile (2022)

After witnessing a strange and traumatic incident with a patient, who, before killing herself insists she has been seeing a shape shifting entity with "the worst smile I have ever seen in my life, Dr. Rose Cotter begins seeing the exact same evil. It's true, the smiles we during Smile are hideous but the idea itself is as effective as it is simple. Rose (astutely played by Sosie Bacon) is predictably the next prey for this smiling curse, and she faces a race against time to figure out what it is and why it's latched itself onto her. As is obligatory for these things, terrible things start happening to Rose and those around her whilst she's trying to get a hold of things before they spiral out of control. Spoiler, she doesn't. The set-up immediately reminds you of another efficient piece of horror in the last decade, David Robert Mitchell's It Follows (2014), an unoriginal but very shrewd addition to the modern horror canon; and what we have here with Smile-despite it's well trodden themes- is another recent horror flick that has the strength of its convictions, and manages to use its time very well, keeping you gripped and interested in the unfolding events. We've seen thousands of curses unleashed on unsuspecting victims down the years, many more boring than the last, but Parker Finn draws discerning performances from all his actors here, most notably Bacon but also Kyle Gallner who pops up as a police officer/ex-boyfriend and posts a plausible turn on a man still very much interested in Rose. One of Smile's biggest strengths is its ending, so often an uninspiring portion of the horror genre. Once again the film doesn't do anything particularly new, but the imagery itself is genuinely scary, and that is something I hardly ever feel myself experiencing. Add that to one or two neat twists and a final shot that doesn't attempt to insult you; it ends when and how it should, much to this viewer's relief. It's also apposite to note that this is Finn's full length feature debut, and in a genre where it's especially hard to actually scare in this day and age, he's done a fine job of producing a calling card here. The only downside is that his next film is supposedly Smile 2, which is currently wavering in pre-production. I'm not saying he can't pull this off twice, but when you've achieved something so fine the first time, do you really need to return for part 2? 7.9/10