After witnessing a traumatic incident involving a patient, a therapist starts experiencing frightening occurrences that she can’t explain. As an overwhelming terror begins taking over her life, she must confront her troubling past in order to survive and escape her horrifying new reality. A film by Parker Finn, starring Sosie Bacon, Jessie T. Usher, Kyle Gallner, Robin Weigert, Caitlin Stasey, Kal Penn, and Rob Morgan.

Dr. Rose Cotter (Sosie Bacon) is a therapist who’s about to head home after an exhausting week at work. However, just as she’s preparing to leave the hospital, an emergency case comes in, forcing her to stay and continue working.

Rose พบกับ Laura Weaver (Caitlin Stasey) นักศึกษาปริญญาเอกที่อยู่ในสภาวะหวาดผวาตลอดเวลา เธออ้างว่ามีสิ่งชั่วร้ายที่คอยติดตามเธอในร่างของคนที่มีรอยยิ้มสยองขวัญและบอกว่าเธอกำลังจะตาย บางครั้งมันก็มาด้วยใบหน้าของคนที่ตายไปแล้ว ทุกอย่างเริ่มต้นขึ้นหลังจากวันที่ศาสตราจารย์ของเธอฆ่าตัวตายด้วยค้อนต่อหน้าเธอ

Rose meets Laura Weaver (Caitlin Stasey), a PhD student who is in a constant state of panic. Laura claims she’s being stalked by an evil entity that takes the form of people with terrifying smiles, warning her that she’s going to die. Sometimes it appears wearing the faces of deceased people. Laura explains that everything started after she witnessed her professor violently took his own life with a hammer right in front of her.

While Rose is questioning her further, Laura suddenly starts screaming in terror and goes into violent convulsions. Rose quickly reaches to the phone to call for staff assistance, but when she turns back around, she sees Laura standing there with a terrifying grin. Before Rose can react, Laura uses a shard from a broken vase to slash her own throat, killing herself right in front of Rose.

After this incident, Rose begins experiencing strange visions that no one else can see, leading her to believe that Laura was telling the truth. Through her investigation, she discovers that the professor who killed himself had previously witnessed a woman’s suicide, and there seems to be a chain of connected deaths. Everyone who shares this experience dies within a week of witnessing the previous death. As she digs deeper, she realizes she’s caught in the same deadly pattern.

Written and directed by American filmmaker Parker Finn in his directorial debut, SMILE is a supernatural horror film with a familiar plot seemingly inspired by the 1991 Japanese horror film リング (The Ring), which follows people who must die within 7 days of watching a cursed video tape, and IT FOLLOWS, a horror film about a curse that can be transmitted through sexual intercourse.

Given the rather conventional storyline and overly simple plot (the protagonist must choose between dying or finding someone to die in her place), the director relies heavily on jump scares to startle the audience.

However, this approach undermines the carefully built atmosphere, reducing it to mere window dressing. For instance, in scenes where characters are in the middle of dialogue, the film suddenly cuts to close-ups of corpses’ faces.

One particularly frustrating aspect is how the film deliberately misleads both the protagonist and the audience. Viewers are often left uncertain whether they’re watching actual events or the protagonist’s hallucinations until the scene transitions to the next. This technique, while potentially effective, becomes somewhat tiresome.

SMILE premiered at Fantastic Fest on 22 September 2022. The film was theatrically released in the United States on 30 September.