Smile London film premiere 2023

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1. A couple of days before the September 30, 2022 release, actors from the film showed up at various baseball games, sitting behind home plate dead still and smiling while staring into the camera, unmoving despite fans in the audience being understandably concerned, while wearing Smile shirts. Another soon appeared in the background with the crowd during the Today show.
2. The film is based on Parker Finn's short film, "Laura Hasn't Slept." Caitlin Stasey reprises her role as Laura in the feature version of the short, as the woman who kills herself in front of Rose.
3. The smiles in the film are all natural and not enhanced with visual effects. The studio even asked if they could be tweaked, but Parker Finn stuck to his guns as he wanted them to be grounded in their creepiness.
4. Paramount originally planned for the film, which had a low budget of $17 million, to be a streaming-only release on Paramount+. The film was screened for test audiences and scored much higher than anticipated, prompting Paramount to give the film a theatrical release in the United States. It grossed $22 million over its opening weekend, which Paramount's distribution chief Chris Aronson said "exceeded our wildest expectations."
5. The film was originally titled "Something's Wrong With Rose" before being renamed "Smile."
6. Towards the end of the movie when Rose visits her childhood home and confronts the spirit of her mother, the broken curtain rail and light coming through the window in the bedroom looks like the "smile" that Gabriel drew representing the entity.
7. Parker Finn knew from the start that he wanted the film's title card to be very anxiety-inducing. An earlier version failed the Harding test which examines how triggering an image is to photosensitive viewers.
8. Parker Finn told the actors who would be smiling in the film that he wanted "dead eyes that do not match an incredibly uncomfortable wide tooth-bearing smile, that it was meant to feel predatory in nature."
9. It isn't explicitly stated in the movie, but the curse may select susceptible victims through the fact that they have witnessed the death of a loved one: Laura (Caitlin Stasey) mentioned seeing her grandfather die when she was a child; the widow of Gabriel (Felix Melendez Jr.) says that he still struggled with the death of his brother; and Rose (Sosie Bacon) is revealed to have seen her mother dying from overdosing.
10. The premise of the film resembles a short story by H.G. Wells, where a man kills a native man in a rural place, and has visions of his grinning head always looking at him wherever he goes (something which no one else sees) and ends up killing himself. The story is called "Pollock And The Porroh Man".
11. (Approx 1:21:00) There's a little Easter egg as Rose looks at her text thread with Trevor. His ID picture at the top shows him smiling while an earlier glance at the thread has a non-smiling pic.
12. The mother growing in size is meant to drive home Rose's feeling that she's back to being a child again in the presence of her mother. The illusion was created in part with a rebuilt hallway at a smaller scale and part with the monstrous double played by Kevin Keppy.
13. When the Paramount logo is shown in the trailer, it is immediately flipped upside down so that the arch of stars resembles a smile.
14. While talking about his creative process, Parker Finn says he wanted "to create a film that feels like an escalating nightmare", and that happens because "the evil in the film uses a smile as a mask to hide its true intentions."
15. When asked if the smile curse is beatable, or is the fight to stop it hopeless, writer and director Parker Finn revealed: "It's a good question. I like to think that this thing, it sort of enjoys toying with its victims and being as elusive and slippery as possible. I like to think there probably is a way to beat it, but I don't know. I mean, it's also quite inescapable."
16. The Entity's true form resembles a rotting corpse with layers of malformed jaws within its mouth. In other words, its looks like a dead person with multiple other people within, not unlike a Matryoshka doll. Considering that it crawls inside of Rose's mouth to possess her, this is directly tied to how it controls its victims. Trauma is also generational and cyclical, which is why the Entity looks like many people stacked over each other.
17. Writer and director Parker Finn wanted to use practical effects as much as possible and "only use visual effects and CG to enhance or sweeten or bridge the gap when something isn't possible practically."
18. (Approx 25 mins.) The person Rose sees from the window is her dead mother. That's also her mom saying "Rose" on the recording at (38 mins.)
19. Upon rewatch, the scene between Rose and Laura takes on an entirely different meaning. Laura falls backward, and starts screaming in terror. There's a brief moment where her mouth is wide open, and implies that she's having trouble breathing. This was actually the exact moment when the Smile Entity was entering her through her mouth to possess her and then drive her to suicide, just like it did to Rose at the climax.
20. The film opened at #1 domestically with a strong $22.6 million, but managed to play strongly through October and November, buoyed by solid reviews and word-of-mouth. It fell only 18% in its second weekend, the best hold of any wide release in 2022, and the second best hold for a horror/thriller film after Get Out (2017). It stayed in the top ten for over two months and crossed $100 million.
21. There's evidence to support the theory that The Smile Entity is a collector of souls, consuming its victims and adding their souls to its own. In the drawings made by Dr. Muñoz, faces are shown embedded all over the creatures body, heavily implying that it brings its victims souls into itself after killing them, perhaps as a form of sustenance. Another clue is when The Smile Entity tells Rose that it will stay with her forever, implying that not only did it kill her, but also consumed her.
22. The cursed "smile people" wear bright, pastel colors while Rose wears dark, contrasting colors, showing the difference between happy and sad.
23. Title screen doesn't appear until 13 minutes into the film.
24. (1 hr 48 mins.) Parker Finn says the face is a "true look at the evil thing that's been hiding behind all the smiles." They called the entity Lollipop thus explaining the use of The Chordettes' "Lollipop" at the start of the end credits and this is what happens at the end of every cycle as the beast physically enters the victim to make them commit suicide.
25. Several shots rotate upside down, to reinforce that the conventional concept of a smile as an expression of happiness or politeness instead turns on its head, and becomes a sadistic expression of evil.
26. The only actual deaths in the film (aside from that of Mustache the cat) are all either suicides, or an act of violent desperation. This is actually accurate to the behavior of mentally unstable people, as victims of mental illness are much more likely to hurt themselves rather than other people and have a higher risk of suicide.
27. The way the entity torments Rose (and presumably its other victims) heavily reflects how mental illnesses affect those in real life, driving home the themes of mental illness: * Rose unknowingly packaged Mustache and gave it to her nephew. Harm or neglect to animals previously cared for is often a strong sign of severe psychological issues. * When Rose has a vivid hallucination about killing a patient in front of her boss, it heavily resembles an intrusive thought. * Rose's problems often fall on deaf ears and she ends up severely isolating herself, much like how those with mental illnesses crying for help and being spurned by family or friends. They're ignored at best or judged at worst.
28. Parker Finn offered up a few additional details on how the smile curse works beyond what is shown in the movie. "The smile definitely hooked me from the very beginning. I love that inherent contradiction that exists within it. Smiles are obviously designed to be a friendly gesture, something warm, it's what we associate with them, but in reality, I think we also use smiles every day to mask what we're really feeling, and that was definitely something that was a motif that was running through the film, and I wanted to see if I could take that and turn it on [its] head and let the evil in the film wear a smile as a mask to create the promise of a threat or something dangerous, something menacing and see if audiences might get freaked out by that."
29. Mustache the cat is played by Star the cat, and the shot of it walking up to Rose was the first thing they filmed.
30. Sosie Bacon (who plays Rose) is the daughter of actors Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick.
31. Laura's description of what she's going through is just that, but Parker Finn also wanted it to foreshadow both how the scene will end and what's heading Rose's way for the rest of the film. He told Caitlin Stasey there "was no way to go too big with this moment," and she delivered accordingly.
32. Everytime that Rose answers a phone, something terrible happens.
33. Smile received mostly positive reviews from critics, who praised the visuals, themes and Bacon's performance. But criticized its jump scares, and plot similarities to It Follows (2014) and The Ring (2002). It was a box office success, grossing $216 million worldwide against a $17 million budget.
34. The film explores several themes and devices common to the horror genre, such as trauma, grief, and guilt. As the audience follows through the lens of protagonist Dr. Rose Cotter, she becomes an increasingly unreliable narrator, further blurring lines between delusions and reality, an area upon which she should, in theory, have a firm grasp as a clinical psychologist. The concept and effects of trauma is explored at various levels. On a clinical level, Rose may be seen as experiencing vicarious trauma (wherein therapists experience trauma as a result of treating their patients' trauma) as she treats patients. On a more metaphorical level, the cyclical nature of trauma is seen through the antagonist monster's process of causing one victim to spread their trauma to other victims. The deeper extent of personal trauma is shown through the multiple endings experienced by Rose as she confronts her more fully revealed past trauma, only to be forced to relive it.
35. The scene where Rose first meets Laura is designed as a parallel to writer and director Parker Finn's short film "Laura Hasn't Slept" which was actually the springboard into this feature. The scene goes in a very different direction from the short, which is included on the Blu-ray Disc special features.
36. Writer and Director Parker Finn wanted Sosie Bacon who plays Rose to have "depth and humanity" but who could also "really lose herself in the anxiety and stress that the movie was going to require." Finn says Bacon pulls off a magic trick and does just that.
37. (Approx 1:59:00) The dangling head gag was part of the original script, and it's "something that everyone around me was trying to wrap their head around." Parker Finn had to create storyboards to ensure everyone was picturing the same thing.
38. In addition to being difficult to design and execute, the overhead "one shot" of the ambulance arriving that then pans up to enter the hospital room was meant to suggest "something omniscient" coming for Rose.
39. Parker Finn revealed that the gas station kill (shown on security footage) was intended to play "way bigger" than expected so there would be a real impact. "Of course, someone dying violently is never a thing to laugh at, but because there's something so evil going on we wanted to lean into the gleeful absurdity of it all." he said.
40. It's inferred through its actions that the entity can actually read its cursed victim's minds. This would explain how it warps their perception of reality and how it can influence their actions to do exactly what it wants in order to keep on living and pass on the curse. The only way one could presumably defeat the entity is to commit suicide alone with no witnesses to see the tragedy (which can't happen if the demon knows what you're going to do by reading your mind and planning for it), or by dying in an accident with no witnesses around. In both cases, the victim still dies but the entity would presumably cease to exist.
41. Director Parker Finn said that when hiring Amalgamated Dynamics for the practical effects, the Zoom call with the two company owners boiled down to him saying 'you guys don't understand, you changed my childhood. This is the reason that I wanted to make movies,' and them geeking out for two hours.
42. The Police statement shown around the middle of the movie has a PDF417 barcode on it. When decoded, it reveals a hidden message. The decoded message says: 'The cache is located at north three six degrees zero six point zero two three west one one five degrees zero one point seven three three. Hint: guard rail.' the coordintes point to a location in Las Vegas, right near a guard rail.
43. A 30-second teaser was released during Top Gun: Maverick (2022) and Crimes of the Future (2022) in theatres.
44. Throughout the film, the Entity can conjure up hallucinations to warp its victim's perception of reality. Even if you try to find ways to get rid of the curse without having a witness or doing so ethically, the Entity would not allow it. It would misguide you with that hallucination, and when you feel comfortable, it would pull you out in an instant. When the phone disappears when the alarm was tripped, it serves as pretty brutal foreshadowing that the Entity has the power to conjure up entire events that never happen, and by extension, the false ending where Rose seemingly kills the entity. The curse is essentially a death sentence.
45. (Approx 1:23:00) The conversation between Rose and Dr. Northcott was filmed as a storm was brewing outside the window. It caused havoc as they tried to match the two sides, but they persevered using color correction and on-set lights.
46. When Rose gets coffee at work following the patient's suicide, her mug has a smiley face.
47. When asked if he had ever formally named his evil entity, Parker Finn stated, "We had some nicknames during production, but for me, for the purposes of the story, it was always really important that we don't define it, we don't stick it in any kind of box because I think that the unknown is always much scarier than when you pull the veil off of it. And I also love the ambiguity that the film is living in. There's something really interesting about taking something so internal and psychological, and then something so external and bombastic and kind of braiding them together until they're kind of indistinguishable. And I'm hoping that that will go the extra distance to get under audiences' skins."
48. When asked what if multiple people witness Rose's death at the end, could more than one witness carry on the smile curse, writer and director Parker Finn revealed: "That's a really fantastic question, and it's definitely one we were talking about and discussing. I think that the evil in the film is incredibly specific and I think as we start to peel back the layers and learn more of what its intentions are and how it works, I like to think that even by the end of the film, it might still have more surprises in store for us."
49. At 1:30:24, Rose's crescent earring is facing in an "unhappy" face frown.
50. Finn offered a little insight into how they figured out which smiling being an infected individual sees and when: "I think the idea was to find ways to make it really surprising and subverting expectations about how and when the smile was going to appear, and to not let it just be one thing, to constantly be evolving and changing. When you realize that it can be a total stranger or it can be somebody that you know or somebody who shouldn't even be able to be in the room with you, it really sort of forces the audience to really put their guards up and not trust anything in the film, which was the hope."
51. The downer ending has been criticized by a few fans, who choose to ignore everything after Rose kills the entity, overcomes her trauma over her mother's death, and burns down her old home. This depressing ending is, however, an intentional commentary on how some traumas are too powerful for some people to ever truly overcome.
52. In a 2022 interview, Parker Finn detailed a few of his inspirations for the film: "Some films that were on my brain when I was making this in a big way was certainly Rosemary's Baby (1968) and how that sort of positions us with that character. The camera movement and blocking in that. Todd Haynes' Safe (1995) is a movie that I was constantly thinking about during this. The way that it places you in the character's anxiety and just keeps ratcheting that up as she goes down that rabbit hole. That was part of it. And then Kiyoshi Kurosawa's Cure (1997). Just the sort of nightmarish atmosphere of that film, throughout that investigation, was something that was definitely on mind while I was making this."
53. In Rose's hallucination of her stabbing Carl, Dr. Desai violently flays his own face as he approaches her. The ending reveals that the Entity transfers itself from person to person by flaying its host and breaking out of their body.
54. Unlike typical demons which possess a vessel and attempt to stay with it indefinitely, this demon acts as a type of living virus transferring from one host to the next. It can be assumed that it does this to sustain itself, consuming the souls of its victims for strength and power before moving on to the next target.
55. As Rose arrives home, right before receiving a phone call from her therapist, her mail has "Last Chance" on it. The premise is that the spirit feeds on unaddressed trauma and enters your body through a new traumatic experience. Her therapist has been trying for years to get her to talk about her mother's death. In this scene her therapist calls, and she hangs up on her. She later directly confronts the death of her mother through a vision from the evil spirit, and talks about forgiving herself, but it's too little too late, not enough to stop the spirit, and she still dies. Actually talking it through with the therapist was her last actual chance before things go off the rails, and she blew it.
56. It was important for writer/director Parker Finn to take the tragedy from Rose's childhood and "hang it as like a black cloud" over her from beginning to end.
57. Promotional materials that were released included an eight-second teaser on May 26, a 40-second teaser trailer shown at screenings of Top Gun: Maverick and Crimes of the Future in early June 2022 and a two-minute trailer and poster on June 22. Brad Miska of Bloody Disgusting described the footage as "pretty generic", but said it stood out due to its similarities to Ringu and The Ring.[16] Shania Russell at /Film compared the film to The Ring, It Follows and Truth or Dare and wrote, "It's all very familiar and probably not too hard to imagine how the movie will progress, but the scares will make or break the experience, and based on the trailer, Smile is more than promising." During several Major League Baseball games the weekend before the film's release, an apparent viral marketing stunt occurred, as the studio or marketing firm purchased seats behind home plate, with actors smiling maniacally into the camera for the pitcher-batter shot for extended periods of time. Some of the actors wore shirts with the name and logo of the film on the front. A tie-in with the Craiyon text-to-image generator involved AI generation of images of nightmarish smiles.
58. Kyle Gallner previously played Bart Allen/Impulse/the Flash on the CW television series Smallville. Jessie T. Usher currently plays A-Train, a spoof of the Flash, on the Amazon Prime television series The Boys.
59. Beyond the visions of people with frightening grins, there's bloodstains shaped like smiles, disturbing pictures of smiles, even the logo gag in the trailer.
60. Visible on Joel's wall is the Italian movie poster for Downhill Racer (Gli Spericolati) (1969).
61. Rose's cabin where her mother committed suicide is no. 409. The numbers add up to 13 foreshadowing unlucky events.

Genre

Horror,Mystery,Thriller

Cast

as Rose Cotter

as Trevor

as Joel

as Dr. Madeline Northcott

as Laura Weaver

as Dr. Morgan Desai

as Robert Talley

as Holly

as Victoria Munoz

as Carl Renken

as Greg

as Detective Buckley

as Jackson

as Mom

as 10 Year Old Rose

as Orderly Dan

as Nurse Wanda

as Nurse