With all the hype around the newest horror movie Smile, I decided I had to see it. Needless to say I was incredibly disappointed. With people saying it had them scared for days on end I was expecting a terrifying movie. However what I got was a sad excuse. 

Smile was released to theaters on September 30 and kicked off the Halloween movie season. This movie is about a psychiatrist Dr. Rose Cotter who is trying to deal with the trauma of witnessing her patient take their own life. She believes everything is an illusion until she takes a closer look at what was happening and realizes this exact thing that has happened to many people. The movie follows her trying to save herself before it’s too late.

With all the great reviews on this movie I was expecting to be too scared to sleep after watching. However I was sorely mistaken. The jump scares were good, I’ll admit it, but that’s about all I was impressed with. This movie relied heavily on slow gore to scare audiences, but at the end of the day it was more unpleasant and gross than scary. 

The characters feel very familiar. Your main character is some woman with trauma you learn while watching, her fiancé who seems perfect but in actuality is terrible, and then the man who isn’t perfect but is for our main character. You feel no attachment to these reused characters and hope one of them has an interesting death.

I was hoping the story line would have had some plot twists, but it was just boring and recycled. The big bad ha to find its way to the main character who then must defeat it to survive. The worst part is that the villain isn’t someone you are trying to find throughout the movie. It’s some random demon that viewers get no background on. There is no guessing or big surprise for viewers, which left me unsatisfied while watching. 

The so-called monster of the movie went unexplained and was given no reason to be around. Viewers are expected to just accept the fact that it’s there. By the end, you’re waiting to know all about it and just get left wondering why it was there in the first place. 

All in all this movie was just another run of the mill horror that relies on unexplained supernatural elements and disgusting, though realistic, looking CGI and special effects. While I would not recommend this to anyone, everyone has their own opinions. So make sure to go check it out and decide on your own!