"Smile" Review
Smile is a 2022 horror film directed by Parker Finn and starring Sosie Bacon. The film is an expansion of Laura Hasn't Slept , a short film directed by Finn. Bacon stars as Rose Cotter, a psychiatrist who meets with Laura (whose actress Caitlin Stasey also starred as the protagonist of Laura Hasn't Slept ), a patient who insists that an invisible presence is stalking her, appearing in various hallucinations where people smile eerily at her. Laura then begins screaming and ultimately commits suicide in front of Rose. Rose soon finds herself being subjected by frightening experiences and begins to suspect that she has now been targeted by the same presence that Laura was apparently tormented by. Smile is a film that melds together two general trends in horror: jump scares, and the exploration of trauma through the lens of horror. The jump scares are abundant and most of them are very effective in scaring the audience, and even though it can feel like the scares pile on on...