naidje

🏳️‍⚧️ Fake gamer girl 🏳️‍🌈


 

Be gay! Do crimes! Make art!

 

30-something trans woman of color, PNGTuber, artist, weird nerd.

 

This page is mostly personal posts, SFW art, and rechosts.

 


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stepfordcuckoo
@stepfordcuckoo

I have been looking forward to this movie for SO long. When I first heard about Smile, and saw the marketing, my mind naturally leapt to other, lesser movies, but still I was interested, because despite those comparisons, it still was clearly Its Own Thing. And then I found out one of my favourite actresses, Caitlin Stasey, was in it, and I could not wait.

To keep a long story from getting any longer, it finally dropped on Paramount Plus, and I finally got the time to watch it.

And let me tell you, it was SO SO worth the wait.

The story centers around a psychologist who is visited by a new patient off the streets, rambling about how everyone thinks she's crazy, no one will listen to her, and wild tales of this creature that wears other people's faces, and makes them do things, tells her things, and it always, throughout it all, can be picked out of the crowd by its unsettling, knowing, grin.

The young woman ends up taking her own life as the doctor watches, and then strange tings begin happening to Rose. She's not sure if they're really happening, or she's just reacting to the trauma of watching the woman kill herself in a horrible way. The mystery slowly unfolds, as the trauma affects Rose and those around her, building to a final crescendo, and an inescapable conclusion.

This movie is...it's really something. It is very, very unsettling, and it's entirely by design, and not just because you bear witness to several horrific images...but there's that too.

The very atmosphere of this movie is designed to make you uncomfortable. The soundscape and score is unnerving, comprised of unnatural sounds, and is the auditory equivalent of chewing on tin foil. And I mean that as a compliment. Even the very sounds and 'music' of the movie put you on edge. It's like taking the "Paranormal Activity sound" and ramping that up by 100%. Once the sounds of the music kick in, you know something is lurking, something is about to happen, and you are squirming in your chair.

On top of that, is the obvious smile of the title, the unnatural grin, the look that conveys no happiness whatsoever, just pure malevolence. And most of the time when you see it, the creature is staring right at the camera, at YOU and several times makes threats directed at the viewer as much as Rose, and that's yet another thing that makes this movie unnerving.

The movie feels like it is trying to traumatise the viewer as much as the characters, heightening that journey and connection, and it is wonderfully effective. It is so smartly directed and shot, an astounding first feature film by Parker Finn, and he is definitely someone I'll be keeping an eye out for in the future. The movie uses its unnerving reality and ramped up tension to solid effect, using several well-earned jump scares. It never, to the best of my recollection, gives into the cheap jump scare of a fakeout where someone's just there to go BLEH! ha ha ha, just kidding! You always know when one is lurking, you just never know when, and they're all motivated by the events.

There are several standout performances, most notably of Sosie Bacon as Rose. A lot is asked of her, to show her past trauma, and the journey she has to go through as her life unravels around her. If her performance doesn't work, this whole thing falls apart. Her life has to be grounded and real for all the weird shit to work.

My biggest complaint is that I wish there had been more Caitlin Stasey in it, but that is just me being greedy. ;)

I do also wish the movie had ended like...five minutes sooner, on a happier note, but I also can't complain with the route the movie took, and it is a perfectly great cap to the story.

All in all, Smile is a great horror movie that puts the audience on edge, and keeps them there, with some new lore under its belt, and the thing that I really like about it, it is the sort of film you can enjoy as a big nasty scary movie, and it 100% works on that level. But it has the deeper level of dealing with trauma and how it perpetuates, that if you want to dig down to that level and talk about the deeper metaphors and meaning, you can go there too, but if you don't, that's fine. That is a difficult balance to walk, and often horror movies trying to have multiple levels you can explore and enjoy, start to fail on one or the other. Usually preferring to build its metaphor more than the horror movie itself. But where others failed, Smile succeeds, and succeeds well.

This is on track to be my favourite movie of the year...even if I am in NO hurry to experience it again! Check it out!


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