‘Smile’ Review: Impressive Horror Debut Places Viewers Inside the Protagonist’s Anxiety

thewrap.com:

that, not to go in there, and just generally not, for the love of god. Even a hardened horror fan can easily get swept up in the tension of “Smile.”“Smile” stars Sosie Bacon (“Mare of Easttown”) as Rose Cotter, a therapist working at a hospital that treats people in severe emotional distress.

She’s been running herself ragged for weeks, barely sleeping, when her newest patient arrives. It’s a young woman who watched a man brutally bludgeon himself to death one week prior, and she says she’s seeing a mysterious entity smiling at her wherever she goes.

Scarier still, within minutes the young woman starts grinning like a maniac herself, and then violently ends her own life while Rose helplessly watches.It’s an experience that would traumatize anybody, but it hits Rose close to home.

Her own mother killed herself when Rose was a little girl and the incident has brought horrible memories back to life. She even thinks she’s also seeing weird smiling people when nobody else can, but that can’t possibly be true… can it?Without getting bogged down in rules and lore, let’s just say “Smile” is a film about a terrible curse, not entirely unlike the ones you’d find in “The Ring” or “Final Destination,” and it’s up to Rose to find a way to survive this harrowing haunting.