*This review contains spoilers.

“Smile,” is a horror movie that left people feeling uneasy. Before the movie was released on Sept. 30, producers hired actors to smile for hours at baseball games. This had an effect on people wanting to see the movie, but ultimately the movie didn’t live up to the hype.

“Smile” is about a demon jumping to its next victim after someone witnesses the demon forcing the victim to end their life. 

The movie trailer had the main plot points which made the movie very predictable. The only real “scary” portion of the movie was the jumpscares that popped up in many of the scenes. 

The beginning starts with a therapist Dr. Rose Cotter, helping her client with mental issues claiming she is never safe and “they” are coming for her. Shortly after, the client ends her life while Cotter is watching – leaving her severely traumatized. 

Cottert starts seeing things and doing things that she doesn’t remember. She wrapped her dead cat in a birthday gift box for her niece and wasn’t even aware she did it. Once her niece opened the gift box at the birthday party everybody panicked and the therapist was crying holding her dead cat and eventually fell into a glass table cutting her arms. 

She is forced to take time off – leaving her alone and isolated. The movie portrays her as someone who had her life together, who was engaged and with a good income. She was someone who enjoyed her job but then became jobless, leaving her arguing with her fiance and seeking therapy for herself because of her traumatizing past. 

In the past, her mother was very suicidal and dealing with many mental issues. This left her to be a caretaker. One day her mother overdosed, and it was revealed later near the end of the movie that her mom was actually calling her to call an ambulance, but she was too scared and ran away which resulted in her passing away. 

Cotter tried to break the chain of the killing spree of watching someone end their own life. The end shows her failing to break that chain because the only way to do it was to murder someone else while someone with a traumatic past to skip the person – however, the pattern still continues. 

The movie didn’t have much of a meaning- if any at all. The whole purpose of the movie was to break the chain of the demon going body to body after forcing someone to end their own life. In the end, she wasn’t able to do it, and the pattern just kept repeating which left the movie with no actual resolution.