Smile (2022)
Last Watch Date - November 19, 2022
Total Times Watched - Once
Comments
There's a theme with these modern horror movies where they get hyped up as new, thrilling, amazing, smart, or whatever mix of those things you want to use. The problem that I've seen over the years, though, is that they never are those things. You don't have to be totally original to be a good movie, but originality definitely helps.
So here we are with Smile, a much hyped movie that was said to make horror both accessible and scary again. This is like Trump talking about making America great again. Horror was always scary. Accessible? Depends on the movie obviously, but I'd say yes. Not only that, but Smile is not scary. Maybe it's accessible. My wife who doesn't prefer horror as a genre watched it with me and didn't like it, but she did watch it.
The plot is something you know already from at least two or three other movies. That's not the worst thing, sometimes it's fun to have a new twist on an old idea. The big issue is that it was WAY too predictable. Predictable to the point that I would think "X is going to happen soon" and sure enough, X happened. I'm trying not to give out too many spoilers here, so don't mind the vague way I'm writing.
The acting wasn't good even for horror. If you're watching a campy slasher, you expect terrible acting and that's fine. This is not played campy at all, though. It takes itself incredibly seriously and the acting doesn't work. I laughed out loud a few times at how bad it was, including a particular scene (that has been totally stolen from so many other horror movies) near the end that I think was meant to be horrifying. Spoiler: it wasn't.
Am I aging out of the media giving these reviews? Probably. I've met a lot of people who have never seen any classic horror movies but still insist that things like this are the pinnacle of horror. It's difficult to read a review and not take it with a mountain of salt at this point. I wish that weren't the case.
Recommended?
It's both unoriginal and poorly acted. You'll know what's going to happen way before it happens. It's not foreshadowing, it's bad writing. And I know a thing about bad writing - look through these posts.
