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Ridley Coote

Smile (2022) Dir: Parker Finn

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This Parker Finn directed horror film went viral for its creepy marketing campaign and intriguing premise. I remember being interested by it at the time of its release, but ultimately I never saw it. However, when the opportunity arrived, myself being a horror fan, I was keen to watch it.


The violence was very explicit, and a couple of the scenes were definitely potentially triggering, but it's by no means the worst film I've seen, as far as violence and gore is concerned. None of it was particularly creative, but, at least initially, it was definitely effective - the opening in particular was freaky.


The jump scares got less and less effective as the film progressed, as did the usual horror techniques. There were even a couple of jump scares that were straight up just funny. As much as I enjoyed that, it did kind of take away from the horror of the film, which was a shame.


The story followed a fairly typical horror movie plot line, and didn't exactly do anything new, but, as these kind of paranormal horrors go, it was fine. I felt quite disappointed, if I'm honest. I had hoped that the film would have something unique to it, but it was awfully one-note.


Sosie Bacon delivered a performance that was somewhat emblematic of the film as a whole; fine - not great, not terrible. Some of her dramatics - the screaming and such - was good, but a lot of her acting felt kind of one-note.


Jessie T. Usher honestly gave the most consistent performance in the film, though he didn't exactly have much to do. I felt like his character was oddly absent at times, and certainly underutilised.


Kyle Gallner had his moments, but I wasn't particularly impressed by him, if I'm being honest. There were also some fairly good performances from some of the supporting cast members, namely Kal Penn, Rob Morgan, Gillian Zinser, Robin Wiegert and Caitlin Stasey.


Overall, this was a fine but unexceptional horror film, which had all of the genre's modern tropes and not much else. I really feel like the idea was better than the actual film. In that sense, it really under-delivered, but in terms of a night's entertainment, it was fine. If you can deal with the occasionally heavy gore, you'll be fine.



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