The ending of the 2022 horror movie Smile sees Joel (Kyle Gallner) arriving at Rose's childhood home and realizing that she is too far gone to help. Rose sees the monster, has a mental breakdown, and can't move. She truly and fully embodies the curse by starting a fire with her own body.
This turns out to be one of the entity's hallucinations (remember those), which leads to the "real" climax of the movie. She heads to the crumbling ruins of her childhood home where we've been led to believe that her mother died by suicide.
With the curse seemingly over, she visits Joel in the Smile ending to apologize for pushing him out of her life. In what could be considered one of Smile's best reveals, however, Joel turns out to be the creature in disguise, revealing that Rose never actually left the house and is instead trapped in her own mind.
The horror in this film lies in the fact that trauma and mental illness do not discriminate: the monster can be anyone. Smile centers on a therapist, Dr. Rose Cotter (Sosie Bacon), and it's no mistake she works in mental healthcare.
The Smile Entity as it strangles Rose, and its most infamous quote. You can't escape your own mind, Rose. The Smile Entity, also called The Monstrosity or simply The Smile Demon, is the main antagonist of the 2020 horror short film Laura Hasn't Slept, as well as its 2022 film adaptation/sequel Smile.
Then, in the very last sequence, the demon removes its face to reveal its true appearance — a pale, lifeless entity with a seemingly endless grin. When the creature literally crawls inside Rose and completely takes her over, we're led to believe that this may have actually happened.
The smile curse operates in a fairly consistent fashion throughout the film. One infected person is consumed, the entity forces them to take their own life and then the witness becomes cursed. But, what if multiple people witness that death? Could more than one witness carry on the smile curse?
In the end, Rose goes to her childhood home to confront her unresolved trauma regarding her mother's death, in hopes of defeating the monster. There, she fights a giant, deformed version of her mom and sets the house on fire, before driving to her ex Joel's house (Kyle Gallner) for safety.
As Joel walks in, Rose is wearing that familiar creepy smile and has covered herself in gasoline – about to light a match. So no, Rose does not survive in Smile and even worse, it seems the curse has found a way to keep itself going, with Joel now presumably set to be its next victim.
The concept of a smile is a powerful element in the movie, as it represents the facade that people with depression, anxiety, or trauma often wear to hide their pain and struggles. By incorporating this relatable horror element, the film strikes a chord with many viewers.
The sight of the entity's true form causes Rose to fall into a trance, and the entity feeds on her trauma by forcing itself inside her body through her mouth and possessing her. Joel breaks down the front door and sees a smiling Rose set herself on fire, passing the curse onto him.
Ok so the movie Smile is based around a curse/entity that feeds and spreads through trauma. The main character Rose gets the Trauma both from her mother's death when she is young and also seeing her patient who had the Trauma die violently.
Even though Rose did everything she was supposed to do — that we're supposed to do to process our own trauma — the monster still won. The cycle will continue. Smile writer-director Parker Finn characterizes the two endings of his film as an attempt to get ahead of audiences' expectations.
The CLIMAX of the story is when the CONFLICT of the PLOT is resolved.It is often the most exciting part of the story: when the hero saves the princess, discovers the buried treasure, or slays the dragon. Imagine when you read a story that you are climbing up a mountainside. The CLIMAX is the mountain peak.
The climax is the high point of the movie where the protagonist, based on the knowledge gained from the rising action, determines what the final action needs to be taken in order to resolve the conflict. The falling action ties up or resolves any minor loose story ends. The denouement is the ending of the movie.
CLIMAX: the point of greatest tension or emotional intensity in a plot. The climax follows the rising action and precedes the falling action (denouement). Climax is the point at which the conflict reaches its greatest height and the crisis, or turning point in the action occurs.
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.
However, not everyone left the cinema satisfied. One of the most divisive elements of Smile is the movie's brutal twist ending, wherein the heroine Rose appears to finally defeat the entity that has been tormenting her throughout the movie.
Smile clearly wants the audience to see the connection between Rose's curse and mental illness. Throughout the movie, characters use therapy buzzwords and often suggest that Rose's mental state is a result of her genetics and past trauma.
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 ...
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.
The monster in Smile passes from person to person like a virus, needing new victims in order to survive. As such, one possible course of action would be to remove oneself from society entirely, escaping to a place of isolation where there are no other human beings nearby to infect.
While its MO was for Rose to harm herself, the demon was also capable of physically interacting with the real world, as shown by the twist of it impersonating Dr. Madeline and attacking Rose. Thus, the monster could have feasibly killed Rose's cat.
Rose begins experiencing hallucinations induced by the demon. Shortly after, she has trouble finding her cat, Mustache, and its tragic fate is revealed during her nephew's birthday party. The boy opens Rose's present to discover her cat's dead body.
She pours it on herself and lights a match. After spending our time seeing things from Rose's perspective, often in uncomfortably closeup shots, we see her final moments through Joel's eyes, who can't look away despite his horror. The curse has now been passed on to him.
