Smile

This year has been a great one for the horror genre!  I have seen more horror movies this year than in the past five years combined (some of my favorites include Pearl, Barbarian, Bodies Bodies Bodies, Nope, The Black Phone, Crimes of the Future, X, and Scream) and I added another one to the list last night by seeing Smile.  It is probably not destined to be among my favorites but I enjoyed it for the commentary on trauma.  Dr. Rose Cotter (Sosie Bacon) works at an emergency psychiatric unit and is clearly stressed, overworked, and plagued by a recurring nightmare when she is called in to conduct an intake interview with a psychotic patient named Laura Weaver (Caitlin Stasey).  She hysterically claims to be haunted by a smiling malevolent entity before she smiles at Rose and then cuts her own throat.  It turns out that Laura witnessed the gruesome suicide of one of her professors, who experienced similar hallucinations, before taking her own life and now Rose believes that she might be next.  There are quite a few jump scares but I didn't find them to be particularly scary (several of them elicited laughter from my audience) because most of them are telegraphed well in advance.  However, the narrative is quite unsettling because you are never really sure if Rose is experiencing something real or if her hallucinations are in response to witnessing her mother's suicide when she was a child.  The central theme of unresolved trauma and the PTSD that accompanies it is very intriguing, especially in regards to how it impacts the people around those who suffer from it.  I also liked the use of a smile as a metaphor for repressed trauma because people often smile through their pain and there is a powerful scene where Rose, who is obviously suffering, attempts a smile at a birthday party because it is expected of her.  Bacon gives a compelling and convincing central performance as a woman who is becoming increasingly desperate but I didn't like her character's resolution because I think it sends the wrong message about mental health (in my opinion the movie should have ended ten minutes before it did).  Despite a few flaws, this movie is a great start to the spooky season and I recommend it to horror fans.