After seeing a patient, Laura (Caitlin Stasey), commit suicide right in front of her, psychologist Rose Cotter (Sosie Bacon), starts becoming paranoid. Laura was convinced that she was being stalked by an "entity" that could look like her or anyone else, and caused bad things to happen every time it appeared. Rose starts to act quite odd, causing anger and consternation in her self-absorbed sister, Holly (Gillian Zinser) and fiance Trevor (Jessie T. Usher). With the help of a detective and ex-boyfriend, Joel (Kyle Gallner), Rose discovers that there have been a whole series of suicides whose witnesses seem to take on the curse of the person who killed themselves. Apparently the only way Rose can get rid of the curse is by killing someone else -- in front of a witness ... The title refers to how the entity makes people/apparitions smile in a fearfully grotesque fashion.
If Smile clocked in at about 80 minutes, it might have been a taut and effective horror film, but at nearly two hours, the deliberate pacing works against it. The premise is creepy but kind of familiar, and while the climax is quite well-done and spooky, it is also not that original. The entity looks quite horrifying, however. The acting and FX in this are good but the flick is just so so. Smile might have been more interesting if it had at least explored the possibility that a human agent was behind the bizarre goings-on. Sosie Bacon is the daughter of Kevin Bacon and Kyra Segwick -- she scratched and clawed her way to success!
Verdict: Sometimes less is literally more! This might have been a knock-out if it didn't remind one of a dozen other previous movies. **1/2.
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