Paramount Home Entertainment, available to Download & Keep now and on 4K Ultra HD™, Blu-ray™, and DVD December 26.

After witnessing a bizarre, traumatic incident involving a patient, Dr. Rose Cotter starts experiencing frightening occurrences that she can’t explain.

Writer/director Parker Finn’s horror comes with enough shocks to provide an entertaining evening, though it is far from becoming a classic.

Smile is one of those horror movies where genuine scares are not earned, but thrust upon you as someone or something screams ‘boo!’ at you. They’re easy scares, and while they momentarily lift you out of your seat, there’s little substance to these carnival ghost train theatrics.

Rose Cotter (Sosie Bacon) is the young doctor who finds herself the next link in a chain of cursed people who pass on their misery to the next victim by grinning inanely and then killing themself. She works out the pattern early on and a lot of the film is spent trying to convince fiancé Trevor (Jesse T Usher, The Boys) that she’s not mad, or getting ex flame (and cop) Joel (Kyle Gallner, Scream) to dig out police records.

The gore is worthy of the 18 certificate, as are the adult themes the movie touches. Bacon is very good as Rose, though one criticism is that there’s a rapid descent in hysteria which leaves the actor with nowhere else to go. It’s also one of those movies where you’re prepared to swallow the hokey supernatural nonsense but struggle to accept clearly contrived plot developments that lazily help the story progress.

Paramount’s disc includes Laura Hasn’t Slept, Parker Finn’s effective 2020 11-minute short, an audio commentary by him, a 29-minute making-of feature, 9 minutes on the creation of the score and 11 minutes of deleted scenes with optional commentary by Finn.

Verdict: Jumps aplenty, but there’s nothing new here, and it doesn’t justify its two-hour run time. 7/10 

Nick Joy

 

Smile is available to Download & Keep now and on 4K Ultra HD™, Blu-ray™, and DVD December 26.