Smile
She should really smile a bit more, be a bit friendlier
dir: Parker Finn
2022
Smile, despite being extremely mediocre, has been one of the most successful films of 2022. Not just horror films, but, like, all films. And I mean in terms of return on investment versus overall box office returns.
I know, you’re right, no sane person who isn’t paid to worry about these kinds of things would expend any energy thinking about them let alone writing about them.
But then I never claimed to be that sane.
The reason why it makes me shake my head in wonderment is a) it’s mediocre even by the standards of mediocre horror flicks b) it’s quite generic and c) it was 100 times more successful than the main horror flick it rips off, being It Follows.
It Follows, which is a much better horror flick, was made for a fraction of Smile’s budget ($1.3 mill versus $17mill), but made $23.3mill at the box office, versus the $200mill plus that Smile made.
That seems so unfair, but that is the way of the cinematic world. Some films, no matter their dopiness, just hit audiences differently.
This has such a simple premise. People, or some kind of entity, smiling creepily. That’s it, that’s all you need. Much easier to create creepy posters and creepier advertising with people smiling in a manner that would make the Joker uncomfortable.
And before anyone actually emails me after crunching the above numbers, yes, I ran the calculations as well, and it turns out the ROI on It Follows was actually higher than Smile’s, despite it earning 10 times more. So I have no idea what point I was trying to make.
Oh yeah, this shitty film. That’s not fair; it’s not a shitty flick, it’s just not that good.
It does have an interesting premise, to an extent. The main character Dr Rose Cotter (Sosie Bacon) is a psychiatrist who works at a psych hospital, and I don’t think she’s very good at her job. We never actually see her, throughout the flick, do anything to indicate she’s good at her job.
But at least we get the sense that she cares about patients in general, that’s a good start. She sees one patient, doesn’t really do anything for him. But the next one that comes in, whose smile graces all the posters for this flick, well, she’s a real peach.
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