Still, despite some of its missteps, Smile is a brave attempt at confronting mental illness in a horror film and might make for a good movie to watch on a night out with your college buddies.
The Smile movie explained the metaphor for a person's control over their mind in response to trauma, and the pressure people feel to cover up their struggles with fake happiness. As the creature makes it clear to Rose during the Smile ending, she is a prisoner of her own mind.
Rose, from the very beginning, is known to have experienced trauma as a child, seeing her mother overdose in front of her. That trauma is laced with guilt as she could have called for help in her mother's dying moments — but chose not to.
The film sustains a strong sense of foreboding and threat throughout, with central themes of trauma and death. There are frequent jump scares and some very strong violence. This movie is incredibly scary and disturbing at the same time.
A man stabs himself with a pair of garden pliers in front of an elderly woman at a gas station, caught on a CCTV camera. Tons and tons of blood spray out of the man's body and all over the front a car. A picture is shown of a heavily mutilated face. Pictures of past suicides in the movie.
"SMILE" Movie Review: A Commentary On Mental Illness
What is the trigger warning for Smile?
Excessive suicide scenes!
CANNOT stress this enough - Massive trigger warning for suicide. There was way too much of it, and not enough warning. Every 15 minutes there was another graphic suicide scene, and/or some scene involving a psychotic break.
Smile turns that into a literal monster only the victim can see, as though it's a hallucination. The parallels to actual psychosis are striking, and that's why everyone around the main character Rose Cotter initially believes it to be a post-traumatic breakdown as a result of witnessing a suicide.
“Please watch this movie with discretion. It's a great horror film. However, no spoilers, if you are somebody who deal with mental health issues, if you're in a dark time right now I would maybe say hold off.
Smile is rated R by the MPAA for strong violent content and grisly images, and language. Violence: People are seen cutting, stabbing, and burning themselves and others. A dead cat is shown.
Is 'Smile' your typical horror movie? Not quite. While there are certainly elements of horror present, it is the metaphor of trauma that truly shines through. Trauma can be just as terrifying, if not more so, than encountering a ghost.
With the colors, we wanted to do something unusual. We had read this study that was from back in the sixties where they found out that this sort of Pepto Bismol pink color somehow was supposed to make violent inmates less violent. So my production designer, Lester Cohen, and I, really grabbed onto that.
Smiling reduces stress. Stress and anxiety can be ongoing challenges, but smiling more often helps the mind and body release stress naturally. Smiling helps reduce stress-induced hormones in the bloodstream, which helps avoid adrenal fatigue. Smiling enhances positive emotions.
A well-used method throughout the film is the technique of inverting camera angles so that you see the city from an upside-down point of view or from side angles. By inverting the landscapes, you see the world as askew. This puts you into the mindset of Rose.
Finn says the face at 1:48:20 is a “true look at the evil thing that's been hiding behind all the smiles.” They called the entity Lollipop — thus explaining the use of The Chordettes' “Lollipop” at the start of the end credits — and this is what happens at the end of every cycle as the beast physically enters the ...
Fully possessed by the demon, Rose douses herself in gasoline and sets herself on fire — just as the real Joel bursts inside her home and witnesses her death, becoming the next victim. Pretty dark stuff!
This film is far from as graphic and disturbing as Ari Aster's “Hereditary” and “Midsommar,” but there are still some disturbing scenes that make members of the audience want to plug their ears and squeeze their eyes shut. The jump scares are also intense but there aren't so many as to overdo it.
“A smile can lie, hiding the tears we cry.” “You can fake a smile, but you can't fake the pain behind it.” “Don't be fooled by my smile, it's the most deceptive part of me.” “A smile can hide a multitude of emotions, including sorrow.”
Smile can be seen as an allegory for the deep pain and trauma that society continues to face. This further leads to the idea of smiling through the pain. The film can also be a metaphor for a person's reaction to their internal state in response to fear.
That's commendable, but the jump scares sometimes undermine the film's most important message: We hide real trauma behind a make-believe exterior. The delusions and visions Rose experienced led her to a literal place that allowed her to deal with her family trauma and truly accept her fate.
Extremely disorganized or catatonic behavior. Disorganized behavior can include odd behaviors like smiling or laughing for no apparent reason, or talking to yourself. It can also include movements that seem to happen for no reason, or even being stressed or annoyed without a clear cause.
Moebius syndrome is a rare birth defect that mainly affects the muscles that control facial expression and eye movement. It is caused by the absence or underdevelopment of the sixth and seventh cranial nerves, which control eye movements and facial expression.
It is a sadistic and violent demonic entity that feeds off of the trauma of its victims, tormenting them to sustain itself, but also because it enjoys causing its victims to suffer, until they eventually kill themselves, or until it possesses them and forces them to kill themselves.
So, the entity uses Rose's body to pour gasoline all over the psychiatrist, lighting a match just as Joel comes through the door. Rose's body is smiling while she burns away, and we can see in Joel's eyes he will be scarred for life by that disturbing suicide.
Then Rose does something she has probably done in therapy a million times: She confronts her mother's ghost, forgiving her younger self in the process. She turns and walks out of the room, but the monster follows her, morphing into a tall, pale, thin creature that fills the doorframe behind her.
