maria -

I had no expectations for this film going in, yet still ended up being disappointed. The way all characters around Rose makes 0 sense, it's like she has the opposite of what you'd call plot armor. Everyone is either extremely unsympathetic or gives her the cliche "i don't know what you're talking about, you're crazy!" - this especially made me mad in the car scene with her husband because the only thing it made me think of is how they were even married in the first place. I doubt he could possibly give her a worse response than that... Even the therapist she sees doesn't give her an appropriate reaction. Neither do any of the people at the birthday party when she straight up falls through the glass table, because I understand the shock everybody must've felt at the sight of a dead cat in a gift box but seriously, not a single person made an attempt to help. I think a feeling of dread can be pretty great for any horror stories and if anything it's what I like most, but Smile just didn't do it right. The entire plot is essentially revealed as soon as Laura takes her own life at the start, there's no room left for any potential guesses, theories or plot twists. I watched this film with another person and as soon as that scene was over we literally looked at each other and went "the entity probably is passed on when you watch someone else die, so it's gonna take over Rose's life and kill her"... And that's exactly what happened. It feels pointless to even watch it till the very end as you already know that anything the main character tries to do will result in nothing. Ultimately the thing that's haunting her will win. Back to the cat scene: it just made me feel so many things. First of all, it was pretty gross... but I'm not sure if i should give Smile some points for succeeding at making the reveal disturbing or take some points away for using animal death for scares? Personally, it upset me. In a way it also made me feel angry at Rose: I know it's not her fault, as if I remember correctly it was confirmed by her own actor that she didn't kill mustache, yet it's just so ridiculous. Did she not check the box once before giving it to Jackson? Did she seriously not even feel the stench of a literal dead boxy coming from it??? This is just an overall issue in the film. As bad as I felt for Rose, I really can't call her a very likeable character and the way she'd act would piss me off at times. As for the ending... Can't say much aside from that it was a bit unsatisfying. Perhaps it would've been better if it wasn't so predictable or even they just gave more backstory to the entity. Overall, I did not like Smile.