Smile

It feels like every oth­er scary movie these days even­tu­al­ly comes around to being About Trau­ma™, but Park­er Finn’s debut fea­ture Smile is the only one that real­ly means it. In this black­heart­ed, dement­ed­ly fun­ny, and stu­pid-in-all-the-right-ways anti­dote to cer­tain films sti­fled by stuffy metaphor, a curse-trans­fer premise not so far from The Ring goes all in on a sav­age sur­vey of just how bad­ly the hor­ri­fy­ing things we wit­ness as chil­dren mess us up for life.

Finn’s undu­lat­ing, rest­less cam­era (my com­pan­ion point­ed out that he bor­rows the upside-down hori­zon shot from Mid­som­mar to sow the same air of unease) opens on a woman lying dead in her bed, slides to the right past a pharmacy’s worth of pills and framed pho­tos tac­it­ly con­vey­ing her divorce, then final­ly lands on the shat­tered face of her young daugh­ter. Smash cut to adult­hood for psych-ward doc­tor Rose (Sosie Bacon), whose morn­ing ses­sion ends with a seem­ing­ly schiz­o­phrenic patient grin­ning as she gives her­self a Glas­gow smile and slits her own throat.

Rose has con­tract­ed some man­ner of sui­cide con­ta­gion, and will soon be moved to look into the deceased’s rav­ings about a malev­o­lent spir­it that tor­ments her with visions of peo­ple bar­ing their pearly whites like beef­ing chim­panzees. As she con­ducts her inves­ti­ga­tion into the gris­ly phe­nom­e­non – helped by a cop ex (Kyle Gall­ner), imped­ed by her alarmed boyfriend (Jessie T Ush­er) and ther­a­pist (Robin Weigert, mon­ey in the bank) – she works her way through a chain of bro­ken souls with still-con­vul­sive pain hav­ing sunk into their bones over a course of years.

This isn’t a rev­o­lu­tion­ary idea, but Finn fol­lows through on it with mer­ci­less focus tem­pered by a sense of humour about his work and genre. He likes to let us in on the joke as he makes it; Rose walks into the incit­ing ses­sion to find what looks like an emp­ty room, and though the fram­ing of the door makes it clear that the accursed is hid­ing behind it, that makes the punch line of her reveal (and the know­ing musi­cal sting) all the better.

Deft for­mal cues give us all the infor­ma­tion we need to enjoy the ride, par­tic­u­lar­ly with regard to the copi­ous jump scares. Gen­er­al­ly a cheap and under­hand­ed tac­tic, it’s redeemed here by Finn’s will­ing­ness to be upfront, as he alerts his audi­ence that something’s com­ing by silenc­ing the omnipresent rum­bling on the sound­track. And a view­er has no choice but to respect the game on the sole gotcha he real­ly com­mits to, a well-land­ed jab for how it com­mands and holds attention.

The sec­ondary reliance on hal­lu­ci­nat­ed night­mar­ish fake­outs doesn’t make such a strong case for itself, and by the time someone’s immo­lat­ing in a liv­ing room, the Aster influ­ence has grown a mite over­bear­ing. But these issues are min­imised by the good­will built up in the indeli­ble moments: a child’s birth­day par­ty that takes a turn for the grue­some to seed anoth­er gen­er­a­tion of men­tal dis­tress; an argu­ment between sis­ters that goes to more seri­ous and vicious places than every­thing else has led us to expect; a hand­ful of face-man­glings for the record books. Finn has a fine-tuned sense for our reac­tion and response, oscil­lat­ing between the dis­qui­et­ing and the absurd (as when Rose pours her­self a bizarrely small glass of wine and downs it in a gulp as if it’s whiskey) at just the right intervals.

The ending’s bold pes­simism seals the respect for and under­stand­ing of the oft-exploit­ed theme of trau­ma, por­trayed here as a deep, pri­mal force as inevitable as death itself. Slip­ping into insan­i­ty right along­side its pro­tag­o­nist, Smile is an uncom­mon­ly sharp movie devi­ous­ly dis­guis­ing itself as more of the same. Low­er­ing our defences with the appear­ance of the com­mon­place may be its most wicked move of all.