Having spent just $17 million on making it, everybody behind Smile, which has been added today in the US on Netflix [Wednesday, May 14], must've been wearing the most enormous of grins when the movie's worldwide takings reached a remarkable $217 million.
It was officially the biggest original horror of 2022, and now it’s about to give Netflix viewers a highly enjoyable case of the shudders.
Director Parker Finn’s feature debut was based on his 2020 short, Laura Hasn’t Slept, and announced its arrival in movie theaters with a gleefully disturbing marketing campaign. Ordinary people were shown in the company of talk show hosts or at baseball games on the big screen, but wearing the biggest and most sinister of smiles. It was all designed to introduce us to Dr Rose Cotter (Sosie Bacon, Kevin’s daughter) and her haunting trauma.
A psychiatrist, working in a hospital ER with the most violent and troubled patients, she can't shake off the memories of one particular young woman torn to shreds by a combination of fear and lack of sleep. She tells Rose that she’s being stalked by a hideously smiling demon that takes on various guises, some familiar, others not. It drives her to suicide and at that moment, Rose realises she’s the next target. And soon she’s seeing smiles everywhere.
What is usually positive and warm becomes stone cold and deadly in a stylish horror that holds on to its origins. Finn brings back the Laura of his short film as the disturbed patient, with Caitlin Stasey reprising the role and doing some hideous things to her own face. Tapping into modern sensibilities with its examination of grief and trauma, the film illustrates yet again horror’s remarkable ability to be relevant, to understand its audience, and still provide all the necessary thrills and chills.
Smile almost went straight to streaming
Yet this was very nearly a movie that didn't make it to the big screen. Originally destined to go straight to Paramount Plus, it no doubt would have done well on streaming, but probably nothing more. Thankfully for cinema audiences all around the world, Paramount took the positive test screenings on board, changed direction, and did horror fans a massive favour.
With a highly-praised performance from Sosie Bacon, unnerving visuals, and a slow burn approach topped off by heart-stopping jump scares, it made no attempt to disguise its many and varied influences. Sure, the film wouldn’t have won any prizes for originality, but its powerfully stylish direction more than made up for it, and a franchise was born.
Smile 2, also with Finn in the director’s chair, arrived last year with the grinning ghoul turning up in the music business to torment global sensation Skye (Naomi Scott).
The reviews were even more enthusiastic, the grins more blood-freezing, and it earned 86% on Rotten Tomatoes. A third instalment is expected to start filming this year and Finn’s star is very much in the ascendant with a remake of 1981’s Possession also on the horizon. He’s slated to direct and write what he describes as "one of my favourite films of all time".
2022 may not have been a vintage year for horror but alongside Smile, it boasted some impressively unsettling films. Australian duo Michael and Danny Philippou exploded onto screens with their debut, Talk To Me, taking us into new territory but viewing it through old-school eyes.
They’re back again this summer with Bring Her Back, and early reactions are even more enthusiastic. Fresh, with Daisy Edgar-Jones and a pre-Apprentice Sebastian Stan, ventured into especially wince-making body horror territory and the original version of Speak No Evil simply scared the pants off us in Danish. The new and the more familiar worked hand in hand to great effect.
Just like Smile itself.
Smile arrived on Netflix in the US on May 14 [it's available to rent in the UK via Prime Video]. Smile 2 is on Paramount Plus in the US and the UK. Talk To Me is on Netflix in the US and the UK.
Fresh is on Hulu in the US and Disney Plus in the UK. Speak No Evil is on Apple TV Plus in the US and the UK.
Bring Her Back is released in US theaters on May 30 and in UK cinemas on August 1.
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