There’s at least one truly horrifying image in the Smile trailer
Directed by Parker Finn, Paramount's new horror movie looks to jam together It Follows and The Ring
Film News Smile
Here on The A.V. Club’s trailer beat, we tend to see a lot of snippets of horror movies that are doing their damnedest to freak us out. Nursery rhymes slowed down, abrupt jump cuts, demon faces: You get kind of inured to it all after a while.
So it feels significant that the new trailer for Paramount’s upcoming horror flick Smile managed to get a genuine “Oh god!” out of us today, right near the end of its two-plus-minute run time. We won’t spoil it here (and your mileage may, of course, vary), but suffice it to say: Jesus!
Smile itself looks to be built from some fairly recognizable parts; the first film from director Parker Finn (based on his own short film), it casts Sosie Bacon as a doctor whose bloody experience with a now-dead patient leads her to begin seeing something deeply malevolent that keeps following her around. The result is something that reads a bit like The Ring meets It Follows, as Bacon becomes increasingly haunted by those big, leering smiles, and the specter of violence increasingly blooms.
Smile, based on Finn’s Laura Hasn’t Slept, is currently aiming at a September 2022 release, i.e. just as the Spooky Season will be thoroughly upon us. In addition to Bacon (who you might best know from Mare Of Easttown and 13 Reasons Why), the film stars Jessie T. Usher, Kal Penn, and Rob Morgan. Penn’s mostly in “disbelieving normie” mode, but Morgan looks like he gets to truly lose his shit as the only other guy who’s been exposed to the “Smile” creature and lived to tell the tale.
Laura Hasn’t Slept had its debut at SXSW a few years back; you can see a teaser for the short (which is decidedly on the minimal side) over on Finn’s Vimeo page. The short starred Caitlin Stassey and Lew Temple as its patient-doctor pairing.
42 Comments
Yeah, that was a OH FUCK moment for sure, it sold me on checking it out.
The plot of this sounds like half the stories on the Nosleep Reddit…
Even older than that. Reminds me specifically of Smile Dog.
But I guess a lot of horror stories are “cursed viewing thing”
“But it comes with a free frogurt!”
This is too scary for me to watch the actual movie but as far as wtf moments go that was suitably wtf…
There’s a lot of good WTF in there. I’d throw in Bird Box as a touch point as well (the book more than the movie).
‘Bird Box’ the movie was awful and bad. A good idea wasted.
The problem with turning BB into a movie is that the audience now really wants to see one of those things. With the book it’s all up to the reader’s imagination (even if they’re never described).
Yep, your description js accurate, and now I will have nightmares for the rest of the week.
Yawn
That jump scare at the end is very old school and very effective. Don’t think I can watch this.
I think the genius is that you think you know what scare you’re about to get, and then it’s something way different.I don’t really enjoy the sustained stress of a horror movie, but I’m a sucker for a good horror trailer, then reading on Wikipedia what happens.
ok, i watched 4 seconds of it and i can’t watch anymore because i am a wuss. what’s the horrifying ending?
A perfectly lovely, sunny day. Our leading lady is sitting in profile in her car. Her eyes are closed; she is apprehensive. Through the driver side window we see a young blonde woman in a pink sweater marching toward the car. Triggered right there because it’s weird when someone walks up to your car with a purpose. LL still hasn’t seen her even though the girl is so close all we see is her torso. Her arms are crossed as though she’s mad. Suddenly she knocks on the car window, startling LL. “What’s going to happen?” The Blonde woman’s head and grossly elongated neck suddenly swing down into view as though separating from her body. Scene.Bodies don’t work that way and you really feel it.
Aah! A rokurokubi!
I looked that up (you “made me look” lol), and maybe that’s what’s going on here. There probably is a strong Japanese horror element. The Ring and The Grudge are both remakes of Japanese films. It doesn’t always have to be spooky kids crawling out of TVs.
It is very reminiscent of the scene toward the end of TERRIFIED where the cop is fleeing the house. It looks fantastic.
Boy I thought for sure that was Jennifer Jason Leigh at first
It would fit. I saw Jennifer Jason Leigh smile at Channing Tatum once, and then his whole head exploded.
I was hoping somebody would do a Van Dyke Parks reference
I recently watched As We See It and thought Sosie Bacon was really great in it and I’m excited to see her in more things.But I can’t watch this as I’m a giant baby. Good trailer though.
For some unfathomable reason, the teaser trailer for this played in front of my showing of Lightyear. I guess the teaser isn’t actually so scary, but it gave me enough of an impression that I’m not even going to watch this full trailer.
It probably played the super short teaser as a tag along to the Paws Of Fury movie. Some idiot in marketing at paramount wanted it together, since those films are both paramount ventures. Never mind the fact that Paws of Fury is a kids movie, meaning this Smile horror movie teaser should’ve been pretty far from touching the kids movie trailer. Like I said, some marketing genius must have it the go.My theatre where I work was smart enough to take it off of any trailer sets for kids films, but kept it on other trailer sets. The exception being maybe the Bob’s Burgers movie’s trailer set.
To avoid the creeping nightmare fuel of a shot like that I just consider whether it was done digitally or if some dude was on top of the car and rolled a fake head down, the image of which amuses me to the point of almost forgetting said fuel.
True story: That’s a practical effect and this is a snuff film.
She’d be pretty if she’d just smile more.
I hope the film somehow works that joke into the script.
Even her smile looks like a frown. She’s seen her share of devils in this angel town.
Was absolutely convinced this was clickbait but nope, that scare at the end is fucking horrifying. Nice!
I read the title and immediately viewed the trailer. I am glad I did not read what you wrote first. Scary. Looks fun.
**Spoiler**I’ll go ahead and put spoiler just in case, but if you’re reading down this far without already seeing the damn trailer that’s your fault! lolAnyway, I did wonder if it would have been better if instead she looked around and it jump cut from the waist view (on her left side) then quickly cut over to the Passenger side window and her face was upside down in that window (with the terrifying smile of course) I think both would have been the same effect essentially but I’d almost like to see it both ways and then decide which one was the most FUCKED UP cuz yea….totally caught this trailer on the Tube yesterday inadvertently and was like “good lord” not sure if I’ll watch this or not, gotta be in the mood, but since it’ll be closer to Halloween by then maybe I will.
I swear I’m not trying to be one of those dicks, but…ok. I was expecting a really big scare, but it was just ok. Maybe it’s because the whole trailer I couldn’t stop thinking of Buddy the Elf’s “I like smiling, smiling’s my favorite”, so every time there was someone smiling on screen I was just kind of laughing. Maybe horror just isn’t my jam. Maybe I’ve just seen too many tropes. “It Follows” was creepy, this just felt meh.
Oh yeah. Loved The Ring, love supernatural puzzle movies, love real people dropped into “this cannot be happening and I don’t know what to do” situations. I’m in.
Very “It Follows”—but I loved “It Follows”, so I’m in. Also, as a mental health worker myself, I’m always interested in ideas that involve the relationship between mental health providers and their clients, so I’m double-in. And yeah, that moment definitely raised the hairs on the back of my neck. Its so nice to see a horror trailer that didn’t involve “sped up image of person waving their head around” or “person closes bathroom mirror and someone is standing behind them in reflection”, even if I wasn’t already double-in on this movie, it would get my vote just by not having those clichés in the trailer.
THANK GAWD they didn’t use and (obvious) computer editing to add exaggerated smiles on people’s faces. faces distorted with the easiest of filters has lost all scare factor ages ago and theres a more unsettling feeling from a real human doing an unnatural thing.
(some times you have to praise someone for not doing a bad thing many
others do, just to re-enforce the good behavior, even when it should be
standard operating procedure for everyone.)
Okay, that jump scare was pretty damn good. Not quite the “Oh fuck” soul-jumping-out-of-your-eyeballs effect of the all timers (cough Exorcist 3 cough), but it looked just weird enough to give me a good chill, and I live for those moments in horror.
After the jump scare at the end of the trailer is there any reason now to go see Smile because everything up to that point was generic as hell.
Yeah, I get the feeling that it’s the one good trick this movie has.
Where can I see the short “Laura Hasn’t Slept” that this is based? I find references to it but no actual link to see it.