Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to a spoiler review on Movie Mix
Speaker 1: Movie Podcast. This is where we dive into a movie
Speaker 1: from beginning to end, talk about the ending, talk about
Speaker 1: every spoiler in the movie, and today we'll be talking
Speaker 1: about Smile. So if you've seen the movie I want
Speaker 1: to hear about the spoilers, keep listening. Or if you
Speaker 1: had no plans to ever see Smile, this is a
Speaker 1: way to listen to the movie for free. And I
Speaker 1: have gotten messages from some listeners who listen to this
Speaker 1: episode and then are later inclined to go and watch
Speaker 1: the movie after hearing everything about it. Myself, personally, I'm
Speaker 1: okay with spoilers. If somebody tells me about the ending,
Speaker 1: what are they really going to ruin? Someone dies? That's
Speaker 1: always the spoiler that everybody you know doesn't want to hear.
Speaker 1: But it doesn't really change anything for me anyway, if
Speaker 1: I know somebody is going to die going into it,
Speaker 1: because if it's a really good movie, it's the journey
Speaker 1: that it will take you on to get to that
Speaker 1: death that will be impactful. And if it's still does
Speaker 1: a good job at that already knowing it's coming, I
Speaker 1: don't think takes that much away from it. But anyway,
Speaker 1: let's talk about Smile. If you didn't hear the spoiler
Speaker 1: free version, the movie is about a doctor who witnesses
Speaker 1: this crazy traumatic incident with a patient. This patient just
Speaker 1: came in after witnessing a teacher at her college killed
Speaker 1: themselves with a hammer, and then after that event, she
Speaker 1: started seeing some really haunting images, felt like there was
Speaker 1: this really dark presence around her, and she goes to
Speaker 1: Dr Rose Cotter played by Socie Bacon to try to
Speaker 1: help her out, and she's telling her about all these
Speaker 1: things and describing what she feels and what she's been seeing,
Speaker 1: and describes that when her professor killed himself, the very
Speaker 1: last thing he did was have this really big smile
Speaker 1: on his face before he took his own life. And
Speaker 1: then this patient goes on to take her own life
Speaker 1: right in front of the doctor, and same thing happened.
Speaker 1: She has a big old smile right before she does it.
Speaker 1: It's like she just got taken over by something. It's
Speaker 1: possessed by something, and then from one end to another
Speaker 1: end of her face she kills herself. Pretty hardcore introduction,
Speaker 1: and I think that was the scene that really set
Speaker 1: the stage for the entire movie. I thought it was
Speaker 1: going to be a lot of the same throughout the movie.
Speaker 1: So then what you start to learn in this movie,
Speaker 1: as she starts experiencing these things, starts hearing things, start
Speaker 1: seeing things, that there's actually a long line of this happening,
Speaker 1: and she goes through some investigations, she joins forces with
Speaker 1: the cop and figures out that this has been going
Speaker 1: on for a very long time and in every case,
Speaker 1: the person who killed themselves had a smile on their face,
Speaker 1: and there was only one person ever to escape the curse.
Speaker 1: And we'll get to that in a second. But the
Speaker 1: part that kind of let me down in this movie
Speaker 1: is that it was very reliant on jump scares, and
Speaker 1: I feel like jump scares are a little bit cheap,
Speaker 1: and that's why I kind of considered this movie to
Speaker 1: be a diet horror movie or a horror movie adjacent.
Speaker 1: That is, because a lot of the scary moments just
Speaker 1: come out of nowhere. They're very quick things, very quick jumps, screams, yells,
Speaker 1: and that's kind of what this movie based itself on
Speaker 1: and relied on. And I just found the characters very
Speaker 1: one dimensional, which is usual for a horror movie. And really,
Speaker 1: Socie Bacon carry this entire movie by yourself, So I
Speaker 1: felt like you needed some support in this movie. The
Speaker 1: cop was okay, he was probably the second most likable character,
Speaker 1: but when it came to characters like her fiance, like
Speaker 1: I like the actor who plays her fiance. He also
Speaker 1: plays a train on the boys, but I found it
Speaker 1: so unbelievable with their dynamic of knowing that her mom
Speaker 1: had killed herself and she was starting to experience these
Speaker 1: things and have you know, the weight of her career
Speaker 1: on her, and now is like trying to explained to
Speaker 1: him that she is not crazy and she's actually experiencing
Speaker 1: these things. And he goes and seeks out the advice
Speaker 1: of her old therapist to come in and help and
Speaker 1: bombard her with that, like why would you do that?
Speaker 1: I just think if I was in that scenario, it
Speaker 1: would be more of a believable thing of like I
Speaker 1: would try to help my life with that, Like, no,
Speaker 1: I believe you, We're going to figure this thing out.
Speaker 1: So I found that part kind of annoying. And her
Speaker 1: going to the cop guy and confiding in him instead
Speaker 1: to help her in the investigation. And the other thing
Speaker 1: about this story is It looks very good on paper,
Speaker 1: even going back through my notes of what happened in
Speaker 1: the movie. When you see it all written, it seems
Speaker 1: like a movie that I would really enjoy. But there
Speaker 1: was something that still just lacked in the execution of
Speaker 1: all these scenes and the execution of all this story
Speaker 1: that made it pretty boring. There was a solid forty
Speaker 1: minutes in this movie where I felt nothing really happened.
Speaker 1: There weren't any scares. It was kind of just moving
Speaker 1: along at a snail's pace to eventually lead to what
Speaker 1: would be the ending. I did like the effect of
Speaker 1: her having to question whether or not things were actually
Speaker 1: happening to her or not. I thought that was a
Speaker 1: pretty cool spin on this type of haunting story of
Speaker 1: something very creepy and kind of off the wall happens
Speaker 1: like whenever she's talking to her therapist and then suddenly
Speaker 1: realizes that that whole thing didn't happen, and then she
Speaker 1: snaps kind of back into reality that it's just a
Speaker 1: demon monster messing with her. So I thought that part
Speaker 1: was cool, but all those scenes were kind of few
Speaker 1: and far between. Even going back to the birthday party
Speaker 1: where her cat had been missing from her house, for
Speaker 1: a while, I couldn't find it, and then she went
Speaker 1: to get her nephew a train set. She put that
Speaker 1: thing in a box and wrapped it up and then
Speaker 1: took it to the party. And then whenever the kid
Speaker 1: opens up the present, it's actually her cat that passed away.
Speaker 1: And you think in that moment that that is all
Speaker 1: going to be fictional and she was just dreaming it,
Speaker 1: but that actually happens. That was probably my favorite scene
Speaker 1: out of the entire movie, just because of the shock factor.
Speaker 1: And I think that was at the moment where the
Speaker 1: movie started to kind of drag after that, and then
Speaker 1: it builds up to the ending, which I said in
Speaker 1: the spoiler free version, I already saw it coming. And
Speaker 1: I know this movie was based on a book, but
Speaker 1: I felt like they took a lot from The Ring,
Speaker 1: where in the Ring, you watched the tape and then
Speaker 1: seven days later you die. In this case, whenever you
Speaker 1: witnessed this person killed themselves with a smile. Most people
Speaker 1: make it days. I think the most another person that
Speaker 1: made it was a couple of weeks. So she is
Speaker 1: racing against time before it finally gets hurt too, and
Speaker 1: she learned from the guy in prison that the only
Speaker 1: way he was able to beat it was to kill
Speaker 1: someone else, and that's what ended up landing him in prison.
Speaker 1: But at the moment that he killed somebody else, this
Speaker 1: evil presence took it kind of a sacrifice and it
Speaker 1: was able to latch onto that energy and spare his life.
Speaker 1: So then she has the idea to go where there's
Speaker 1: nobody around her. She thinks if she can completely isolate herself,
Speaker 1: that this evil presence will have nothing to feed off
Speaker 1: of and she'll have no one to kill herself in
Speaker 1: front of, therefore ending it. So she goes out to
Speaker 1: her childhood home, which the movie I felt was trying
Speaker 1: to make this connection with the way her mom killed.
Speaker 1: It opened with the first scene of her witnessing her
Speaker 1: mom dying, and you find out later that she killed
Speaker 1: herself from suicide. So I felt like it was trying
Speaker 1: to do this full circle moment and bring it back
Speaker 1: to her childhood home. I just felt that never really
Speaker 1: connected there in the end, such an emotional thing. I
Speaker 1: thought was going to have a way to bring those
Speaker 1: two things together, Like you go all the way back
Speaker 1: through tracing this in history, that maybe the person that
Speaker 1: started with was her mom. It just felt like it
Speaker 1: was building back toward something like that and never really
Speaker 1: got there. Instead, she goes back to her childhood home,
Speaker 1: and this is where she confronts this demon. This is
Speaker 1: where we get our first good glimpse at it, and
Speaker 1: it has some pretty good imagery. I thought the monster
Speaker 1: was not the most unique looking, but it was kind
Speaker 1: of jarring to see such a creature like this and
Speaker 1: then see us start to mess with her but not
Speaker 1: have that full capability to really take her over. And
Speaker 1: then you find out that it was able to trick her.
Speaker 1: She thinks she is able to defeat the demon and
Speaker 1: burn it to the ground, drives back to the other
Speaker 1: guy's apartment, the cop who has been helping her the
Speaker 1: entire time, and you realize that was all a hallucination,
Speaker 1: and she is back at her childhood home. The cop
Speaker 1: has arrived there and is knocking on the door and
Speaker 1: defeating the purpose of her being alone, he walks in
Speaker 1: he sees her standing there, and there it is the
Speaker 1: moment I was suspecting from the very start of it
Speaker 1: that she of course wouldn't be able to beat it.
Speaker 1: She's there with a smile and then lights herself on fire. Therefore,
Speaker 1: passing it along to this guy because the same thing
Speaker 1: happened she had to smile on she killed herself, and
Speaker 1: now that curse is going to be passed on to him. Therefore,
Speaker 1: with the success that this movie has had now at
Speaker 1: the box office, costing only seventeen million dollars to make
Speaker 1: and making over a hundred million dollars across the globe,
Speaker 1: I think it's at a hundred and thirty seven as
Speaker 1: I'm recording. This now sets up that sequel, so they
Speaker 1: have an announced date yet, but of course there is
Speaker 1: going to be a smile too, and I think I'm
Speaker 1: okay with that. I think this franchise could get better.
Speaker 1: It was a pretty minimal budget movie with seventeen million,
Speaker 1: and I have seen a lot of people since really
Speaker 1: enjoy this movie, and I think it just wasn't for me.
Speaker 1: And I'll stand by my two point five rating, and
Speaker 1: I give that a lot still to the marketing behind
Speaker 1: this movie. But I still think on paper it is
Speaker 1: a pretty good story. I just think again the execution
Speaker 1: of it just didn't really hit. So if you have
Speaker 1: this good concept, if you have something that can be
Speaker 1: made into a sequel, I think all they need now
Speaker 1: is to take some more money into the production of
Speaker 1: this movie, add some more scares in there, build out
Speaker 1: a better story, maybe give a little bit more insight
Speaker 1: on what this curse actually is, some history behind it.
Speaker 1: They didn't really have time to get into that, even
Speaker 1: though two hour movie. I feel like they should have
Speaker 1: gone to some of that and then just make a
Speaker 1: bit of a more hardcore sequel, just have some more
Speaker 1: action in it. That's really all this movie needs to be.
Speaker 1: I would say in the three point five range. They
Speaker 1: could get there. And the only thing I hope they
Speaker 1: don't do a Smile, even though I want to know
Speaker 1: a little bit more in the background, is do a
Speaker 1: part two, then do a part three, and then kind
Speaker 1: of do what all the other horror franchises do and
Speaker 1: do a prequel to how it actually started, because I
Speaker 1: think that would be a very boring movie. I think
Speaker 1: they only need that to be maybe a five ten
Speaker 1: minute max sequence in a Smile too, but that does
Speaker 1: not need to be its own movie. I can only
Speaker 1: imagine how much that movie would drag. So I think
Speaker 1: the best scene still out of the entire movie was
Speaker 1: her accidentally gifting the dead cat to her nephew and
Speaker 1: then at the very end when her mom morphed into
Speaker 1: that really giant sized version of her, that was creepy.
Speaker 1: For a little bit. It kind of felt like a
Speaker 1: Resident Evil video game style scenes, So I don't feel
Speaker 1: like it was anything I hadn't seen before, But that
Speaker 1: was the only moment that I felt like, all right,
Speaker 1: we're finally getting going here. And then when she did
Speaker 1: defeat him in that scene, it would just kind of laugh.
Speaker 1: That was a little too easy, so bring us back
Speaker 1: to the real ending. I also think this is a
Speaker 1: pretty good kicking off point for Socie Bacon's career. Who
Speaker 1: is Kevin Bacon's daughter, And I wonder if they cast
Speaker 1: it her specifically, be because she looks so much like
Speaker 1: Hillary Swink, to the point that when I first saw
Speaker 1: this trailer, I was like, Wow, this is an unusual
Speaker 1: role for Hillary Swank, not her at all. They just
Speaker 1: look very very similar. But she did carry this entire movie.
Speaker 1: I think obviously now that she's dead, we won't be
Speaker 1: able to see her kind of take that roll on
Speaker 1: again unless they bring her back from the dead or something.
Speaker 1: But I feel like with the success of this movie,
Speaker 1: maybe it would open up for another actor to want
Speaker 1: to take on her style role in the next one,
Speaker 1: even though it'll be the cop who is trying to
Speaker 1: save his life. I think having another cool supporting role
Speaker 1: in that would make for a better sequel, especially now
Speaker 1: that it has some buzz around it. I think with
Speaker 1: the success of this and with the marketing behind it,
Speaker 1: this will be a movie we talked about for at
Speaker 1: least another four or five years, and I'm cool with that.
Speaker 1: I like any horror movie that gets some national attention
Speaker 1: that makes some money at the box office, especially with
Speaker 1: a low budget like this, and I am down to
Speaker 1: give a smile to a shot. So that is the
Speaker 1: spoiler edition of my smiled review. Let me know if
Speaker 1: you had any other thoughts on the movie or if
Speaker 1: now you may go watch it for yourself. And until
Speaker 1: next time, go out and watch good movies and I
Speaker 1: will talk to you later.