But you see why I bring Amulet up in connection with Smile, right? That imagery at the end, unlike anything you’ve seen in the movie so far? I love that freaky aesthetic leap, or veer, and I also loved it in Smile.
Huge spoiler below if you haven’t seen Smile, but if you have, a reminder that for a brief shining moment, it was kind of frickin’ awesome:
No because I haven’t seen Smile! What am I doing in the Smile thread? I don’t know!
Hey! I’ve seen Smile now. I saw it on an airplane, and everything is worse when you see it on an airplane, so I won’t judge too harshly. Also I’d totally forgotten that I posted in this thread before!
Anyway, I really appreciated Smile’s… dedication to certain horror tropes (particularly the Investigation and/or Communicable Curse). It was like someone put The Ring, Final Destination and It Follows in a blender. You’ve got the setup, the inevitable survivor of the previous cycle, and so on.
Other than that, though… meh. The movie grinds to a half at the start of the third act when she decides to go to the house. It’s like 10 minutes of her walking around, my attention wandered pretty badly and i kept checking how much time was left. Although the end is, as people have said in this thread, visually cool, it’s pretty unsatisfying story-wise. I wanted to see her figure out some clever way out.
Someone told us, “Oh cool, it’s a horror movie where she doesn’t escape at the end!” And my son said, “Oh, you mean like in every other horror movie???”
Lips are sealed as far as deal details go, but Parker is expected to write, produce and direct features in the horror genre. The studio would love a Smile sequel but it’s not clear what Finn’s next movie will be.
I think, for me, where Smile pivoted from being a kitschy, silly horror time to being grossly exploitative was when its commentary on trauma became apparent. It smacked me of taking a concept, flipping it upside-down and promptly shaking it around for all its worth without the first-hand knowledge necessary to elevate it beyond pulp taking advantage of pain. At no point did I feel nuance or consideration for survivors. As a survivor. I wanted to enjoy it for its goofiness, and I can totally see a scenario where I coulda, but I couldn’t. Hard pass on Smile 2: Smile Harder, but I loved Skinamarink so what the heck do I know really!
Cool monster, though.
Man, this movie made me mad. The idea is creepy, there’s some good early creepy bits, but it really doesn’t know what to do with it. The jumpscares, as Tom noted, but also why is it a monster that does generic monster voice growling and threatening? Why does it have a floppy head when it’s her sister? Why does it pull its face off like it’s in Hellraiser? I don’t particularly like animals getting got in horror movies (poor Mustache - good cat name btw) but I’d maybe have lived with that if the movie had ever focused on the monster doing stuff and making it look like she did (a tired horror trope for sure but still, focus) but no, that was it. And sure, what the protagonist is going through is fucked up and hard to believe but at no point does she even attempt to present it in a way that does anything to help her case. When her cop ex is like “why didn’t you tell me about the connection with your patient?” I’m like good fucking question! (I think the movie’s answer would be “trauma has made me closed off, etc etc” and sure, she talks about that towards the very end, although apparently in a dream or something, but…still. )
Gah. It Follows, The Empty Man, Amulet, I loved all those movies people have been bringing up in the thread. Not this. And I sure wanted to. :/
Of course there’s going to be a sequel.
A poor man’s The Ring/It Follows. And The Empty Man blows this thing out of the water.
The first death is super effective and creepy as hell but it’s all pretty downhill from there. It doesn’t know what to do with its self. Outside of like the birthday party scene there actually isn’t even much interference until the very end. Just some tense scenes ruined by very cheap and random jump scares.
