It's hard to shake the uneasy feeling of this film. It's grim and foggy but at the core is the idea that when trauma is passed from person to person it will consume you. With that in hand, director Parker Finn plays on the idea that most people who suffer through awful events in life will have their past consume them if they don't confront them. Dr. Rose Cotter (Sosie Bacon) is a clinical psychologist who surrounds herself with the mentally broken people of New Jersey (add your own joke here). You can basically connect the dots as to how she became good at her job. One fateful day a girl comes into her office and gruesomely ends her own life. That launches Sosie's journey into her own madness. Slowly seeing things in her life. Or being haunted by voices of her past. Whatever it is knows her greatest pains. And exploits it. The mystery isn't completely satisfying to solve, but the constant moments of jerky jumpscares definitely make you feel on edge.

What I particularly like is the uneasy camera work. It isn't afraid to linger long within the frame. Nor add dutch angles. It plays like 70's cinema. The frames make you squirm. Though much of the scares are telegraphed. This isn't a slasher gory flick. It's really a psychological mind bender. As mentioned before, the resolution won't make you happy. But then, it really is watching someone work through their own mental illness. If that is interesting to you, this is the movie for you.

I can't stop smiling at the mastery of filmmaking on display in Smile. The directing is topnotch. All of the technical aspects are pristine, especially the sound design. The musical score greatly enhances the mood. Even something as simple as transition shots are stunning. It's visually elite.

I can't stop smiling at how ridiculously scary this movie is. I'm a 37-year-old man who has seen hundreds of horror flicks of all types. And yet this movie had me on edge from beginning to end. At points I was paranoid that someone was standing off to the side in the shadows of the theater. It continued afterwards, when I was startled by what turned out to be the shadow of the car behind me. And then again when the curbside lady brought my food out. I can't remember the last time a movie did this to me.

I can't stop smiling at stumbling upon what might be my favorite movie of the year. I went in, as usual, without watching any trailers or looking up reviews/ratings. I had no expectations and was fully blown away. I was either smiling or had my jaw dropped for most of the runtime.

I can't stop smiling at how impactful some of these scenes and moments are. I will never forget them. They are seared into my brain forever. Whoever came up with them, whoever designed them has to be some combination of genius and possibly disturbed. I love it. Maybe I'm disturbed too.

I jumped about 20 times. None of the jump scares are cheap. They are all creative and earned. The few that are predictable still startle. I sometimes laughed afterwards at how bad it got me.

I had a blast with Smile. It's not for the faint of heart or horror novices. For everyone else, for horror fans, for people who want high-quality cinema, this is the movie for you. (2 viewings, opening Friday UltraScreen 9/30/2022, UltraScreen 10/6/2022)

Firstly, Rose is a better person than me because I'd have done what that man told her and spent the rest of my days in prison, in peace. 7/10, this is the rating I'd give if I hadn't watched a lot of horrors so that's what I'm sticking with, it reminds me so much of The Ring and has a lot of the orthodox methods other horror movies used to incite fear. So nothing groundbreaking, still, for the most part they are stilly effective. Only problem is you can figure out how it's probably gonna end. I went into this pretty dozy but the first scare woke me straight up. There's a lot of jump scares and they have the desired affect then they start to get repetitive, which doesn't bode well for the end of the movie because it feels amazing at first the quickly starts to feel unimaginative as the movie keeps depending on the same old tricks. Unfortunately horror movies need to peak towards or at the end so that they leave you with a lasting impression to make you afraid to sleep in the dark. It however still is the best horror I've seen so far this year by quite some margin. I also really loved the title sequence at the beginning of the movie as well. The 'sanatorium + demon possession' horror formula is always a welcome for me.

Funny thing about horrors is how tough people try to act afterwards, I sat close to this couple that were squirming at literally every jumpscare, then at the end of the movie both went "it's probably like a 4/10" "yeah, horror movies just aren't scary anymore" and that really just made my day lmfao.