Smile (2022)

Smile arrives with the confidence of a film that knows exactly which fears it intends to monetize, and trauma is the commodity on offer. Dr. Rose Cotter, a therapist, watches a patient slit her own throat while smiling, and from that moment the movie becomes a study in inherited dread, a curse passed from witness to witness like a virus with a good dental plan. Parker Finn directs with real craft and no discernible interest in saying anything. The entity feeds on suffering, the suffering is the point, and the credits roll before anyone has been asked to reflect on the human condition. This is efficient, and it is honest about being efficient.

The supporting ensemble is unusually varied for a New Jersey hospital, and the film treats that variety as scenery. Rob Morgan, Kal Penn, Jessie T. Usher and Judy Reyes appear, do their work, and exit without the screenplay ever suggesting their presence carries meaning. Rose's gender is likewise incidental. She is a woman, she is a professional, she investigates, and none of this generates a thesis. The film's engagement with mental illness is the closest it comes to a social conscience, and that engagement is exploitative. Psychiatric care, PTSD and maternal instability are deployed as dread delivery systems, not as subjects deserving of dignity. The body horror is grotesque spectacle, the entity peeling its own face apart for a scare, and no message about self-acceptance is smuggled in alongside the viscera.

There is no economic critique, no environmental sermon, no historical revision, no romantic subplot that acknowledges a spectrum of desire. The film has one idea, that trauma is contagious, and it repeats that idea with increasing volume for ninety minutes. As an artifact of cultural instruction it is nearly inert. As a machine for making audiences grip their armrests, it performs admirably. We classify it with a shrug and a note of mild respect.