| Paramount Pictures | Release Date: September 30, 2022 | CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION | ||
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Positive:
25
Mixed:
6
Negative:
1
|
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Critic Reviews
The double-edged sword with Smile and its popularity means there may be a sell-by date after which many of the harrowing sequences become subsumed into popular culture and will no longer feel fresh upon initial viewing. This isn’t the film’s fault, but such is often the case when the public gets a hold of a work of art. See it with a crowd, and see it soon.
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PolygonSep 26, 2022
No matter how excessively the legitimate scares pile up, they’re startling and convincing. The editing and music are impressively tuned for maximum impact whenever the slow-burning tension resolves with an abrupt, ugly surprise. All of which makes Smile an efficient ride, if an unusually unrelenting one.
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ColliderSep 27, 2022
Smile holds no surprises. No big twists. You know what you are getting going into this movie. It is predictable from the first minute. But it is an enjoyable, scary ride that is well-plotted and acted. You will know how it ends within the first five minutes of the film. But the ride getting there is well worth it.
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Bacon is great fun as a girl on the verge of a nervous breakdown, chirping with increasing desperation that she's fine, and Finn is a pleasingly nervy stylist, letting the camera tilt and flip at seasick angles and ratcheting the tension as he goes. Smile is a pretty silly movie by any metric; still, it has teeth.
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Smile represents the latest in an impressive roster of horror films that have pushed the envelope, daring to go where most cookie-cutter fright-fests of the past decade have avoided treading. This is a dark, uncompromising movie that explores serious subjects like trauma and suicide.
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[Parker's] made a scary movie that balances psychological shock therapy with old-fashioned fright, shadowy dread with blunt splatterfest FX, an artsy-fartsy sense of stylistics slapped on to a twisty B-movie scenario. It may open with Paramount name slapped on the beginning, but this is textbook A24 horror by any other name.
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What Finn’s film lacks in originality it makes up for in technical prowess, and he has the courage of his convictions. The colors, even the ones that should be bright, are muted. Everything is just a touch off, until it’s a lot off. Smile isn’t a great horror film, but there’s plenty here to make you … well, you know.
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Indeed, Smile, at its best, is a bit weirder and more left-field than you may expect. Following the recent release of Barbarian, it’s continuing this year’s trend of seemingly well-polished, potentially anonymous studio horrors having much more inspired, hidden ambitions than other high-profile contemporaries.
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RogerEbert.comSep 26, 2022
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