Smile 4K 2022

The $17 million horror film "Smile" has already earned over $200 million worldwide. For debutant director Parker Finn, the film was a real breakthrough, who is now sure to be inundated with all sorts of offers. Best of all, the film wasn't originally planned for wide release, but knowledgeable producers saw potential in the picture and risked releasing it in theaters without an advertising campaign, relying only on word of mouth. And this, as we all know, has worked 100%. While 'The Barbarian' has been called the major horror film of the year, 'Smile' is a sleeper box office hit, which in some respects resembles the now-cult horror film 'It Follows,' 2014.

In addition to the calibrated camerawork and particular visual minimalism, the story, like a scary movie in slow motion, gently creeps up on the viewer, frankly hinting at a certain dystopia of what is happening on the screen. According to the plot, a certain curse haunts a young girl, turning her from a promising psychiatrist into a real town madwoman. The authors reveal in detail all the stages of human madness, where in the eyes of others the heroine is gradually going mad, and inside the girl herself there is a fierce struggle with an invincible evil spirit.

And yet, despite the obvious merits, the film also has flaws. Such a simple and straightforward plot with a monotonously overpowering atmosphere could easily fit into 80 or 90 minutes of timing, but the film was stretched out to almost two hours, thus lessening a little the emotional burden of watching it because of a banal feeling of boredom. The artificial overlongness is a minus to the picture, although the production is on a very good level for such a budget with a fair amount of computer special effects. In general, 'The Smile' is a quite good horror film without any pretensions to brilliance, which may appeal to all fans of unhurried dark bedtime stories.