Horror movie Smile starts with a grin, but will leave you with a sour frown

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• Smile
• Written and directed by Parker Finn
• Starring Sosie Bacon, Kyle Gallner and Robin Weigert
• Classification R; 115 minutes
• Opens in theatres Sept. 30

It might seem like superhero movies are the last reigning kings of the box office, but there is another genre of film that has quietly dominated theatres alongside Marvel and DC.

Whether it’s the fourth iteration of The Conjuring movies, one of its many spin-off Annabelle sequels, an 11th Saw or something more inventive and indie like Bodies Bodies Bodies or X, horror is as crowd-pleasing and democratic as any Avengers or Iron Man movie. Certainly one thing most of these flicks can do that an action blockbuster can’t, is turn around big thrills on a small budget. The original Purge film released in 2013, cost just US$3-million to produce, but grossed more than US$34-million during its first weekend alone. And all audiences ask for in return are genuine scares.

Writer and director Parker Finn is hoping Smile, his feature film debut, will join those ranks, delivering another frightful, box-office smashing hit.

An adaptation of Finn’s own short film, Laura Hasn’t Slept, which won the Special Jury Recognition Prize in the Midnight Short category when it played at SXSW, Smile expands on the premise of that short: A young emergency room therapist named Rose Cotter (Sosie Bacon) witnesses a violent, gruesome incident with one of her patients. This traumatic, gory scene is one of the film’s first and sets the stage for what should be more bloody, eerie and over-the-top scares.

Shortly after Rose sees her patient harm herself, strange, frightening things begin happening to her. She sees unnerving images, hears creepy voices and in one of the film’s scariest moments, gets what should be a routine security call from her alarm company, which smartly plays with the genre’s “don’t turn around” trope, with a solid, scary payoff. I think the entire movie theatre was holding its collective breath. This scene also perfectly utilized the film’s inventive sound design, playing with volume and silence to create an atmosphere that jumps between tension and release quickly and effectively.

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Sosie Bacon (yes, she’s Kevin Bacon’s daughter) is also great as Rose, transforming physically from a tightly wound professional to someone completely unravelling in the midst of what appears to be a psychological breakdown. Still, despite her magnetic performance, much of the other characters often feel one-dimensional and poorly sketched out. There is the cold, unsympathetic fiancé (Jessie T. Usher), the sister (Gillian Zinser), who is a caricature of the narcissistic, stay-at-home wine-mom and the helpful, puppy-dog ex-boyfriend (Kyle Gallner), who just happens to be a cop and can get Rose access to all kinds of classified police files and horrific crime scene photos.

Overall, it’s a promising debut from Finn, who does manage a handful of terrifying scenes. Unfortunately, the film struggles after the first, genuinely fright-filled 30 minutes and then never quite finds its footing after that. Tonally it sits somewhere between The Ring and It Follows, unsure if it’s a straightforward horror about a deadly curse or if it’s a more winking nod to the genre that gestures toward something bigger about trauma and grief.

A few of the jump scares left the audience somewhere between nervous laughter and breathless horror, which is the ideal state of viewing for a good, scary movie. But the central evil, the thing we’re supposed to fear the most, is not frightening at all, in fact it was almost comical, bordering on the absurd. By the time you reach the conclusion, you’re left rolling your eyes at the obviousness of what was always coming.

Special to The Globe and Mail

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