![]() “Smile’s” greatest asset is its relentless, oppressive grimness: This is a film where children and pets are as vulnerable as adults, and the horror elements are bloody and disturbing to match the dark themes. Brief reference is made to a cluster of similar events in Brazil, opening up the door to a sequel. The film’s storyline follows many of your typical beats of a supernatural horror-mystery, escalating from a quick Google (the internet-age equivalent of a good old-fashioned library scene) to an in-person interview with a traumatized, incarcerated survivor of whatever this malevolent entity actually is. Their tentative reunion opens the door to the film’s mystery element, which makes up much of “Smile’s” long, but not overly long, 115-minute run time. The only one who believes Rose is her ex, Joel ( Kyle Gallner), a cop who’s been assigned to Laura’s case. Desai ( Kal Penn), and her sister Holly (Gillian Zinzer), certainly seem to think the problem is more neurochemical than supernatural-that is, until it’s way too late. ![]() ![]() The people around Rose, including Trevor, her therapist Dr. The idea that she might not actually be plagued by the same entity that killed Laura, and that her hallucinations, lost time, and emotional volatility might have an internal cause, seems to bother Rose more than the concept of being cursed. Usher) admits that he’s researched inherited mental illness online, and harsh terms like “nutjobs,” “crazies,” and “head cases” are used to describe mentally ill people throughout the film. That lingering trauma, and the fears and stigma that surround it, form the film’s most intelligent thematic thread: Rose’s fiance Trevor ( Jessie T. This would unsettle anyone, but it especially bothers Rose given that Rose’s own mother died by suicide many years earlier. At the end of the extended dialogue scene that opens the film, Laura turns to Rose with a psychotic grin on her face and proceeds to slit her own throat. “It looks like people, but it’s not a person,” Laura explains, saying that this thing has been following her ever since she witnessed one of her professors bludgeoning himself to death with a hammer four days earlier. That’s where Rose briefly meets Laura ( Caitlin Stasey), a PhD student who’s brought to the psychiatric emergency ward where Rose works, shaking and terrified that something is out to get her. Rose Cotter ( Sosie Bacon) throughout “Smile” likes the taste of people who have witnessed someone else dying by suicide-gruesome, painful, bloody suicide, by garden shears and oncoming trains and the shattered fragments of a ceramic vase in a hospital intake room. Specifically, the vague something that dogs Dr. The difference here is that the monster is barely a metaphor at all: The demon, or evil spirit, or whatever it is-the movie is vague on this point-literally feeds on, and is spread by, trauma. And although it comes on the cusp of a new decade, the new Paramount wide-release horror movie "Smile" fits right in with its PTSD-induced kin. Or should that be the end? Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind employed similar narrative gymnastics (albeit in a more romantic setting) four years later.When the horror histories of the 2010s are written, the decade will be associated with trauma metaphors the way the ‘80s are with slasher movies. The big twist is that Shelby accidentally killed his diabetic wife with an insulin overdose, and that he’s created the backstory of the elusive “John G” to give his life purpose – instantly explaining why Teddy (seemingly Leonard’s closest friend) was shot at the beginning. Up to the final scenes, Memento’s focus is on Leonard Shelby, an amnesiac who can’t make new memories, and uses tattoos and Polaroids as reminders in his quest to find his wife’s murderer. Technically speaking it shouldn’t really be on a list of the best movie endings at all, seeing as the tricksy backwards structure means the end is actually the beginning of the story, but it is a genuine original. It may not Christopher Nolan’s debut (that honour goes to Following), but Memento is the film that announced the arrival of an exciting new filmmaking talent.
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