Review: ‘Smile’ (2022), starring Sosie Bacon, Jessie T. Usher, Kyle Gallner, Robin Weigert, Caitlin Stasey, Kal Penn and Rob Morgan

September 30, 2022

by Carla Hay

Sosie Bacon and Jack Sochet in “Smile” (Photo courtesy of Paramount Pictures)

“Smile” (2022)

Directed by Parker Finn

Culture Representation: Taking place in New Jersey and briefly in Altoona, Pennsylvania, the horror film “Smile” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with some African Americans, Asians and Latinos) representing the working-class and middle-class.

Culture Clash: A clinical psychiatrist witnesses a patient commit suicide after the patient claims to be stalked by an evil entity, and then the psychiatrist begins to believe that this evil entity is now stalking her and is trying to kill her.

Culture Audience: “Smile” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of terrifying horror movies about supernatural evil and about how trauma can haunt people.

Sosie Bacon and Jessie T. Usher in “Smile” (Photo courtesy of Paramount Pictures)

“Smile” doesn’t reinvent the horror genre, but it has the type of suspense and gore that will get viewers to jump and squirm in their seats and possibly have some nightmares. This well-crafted story is the start of an obvious franchise. Unfortunately, there is a very real possibility that “Smile” could turn into franchise like the “Saw” horror movie series, which overstayed its welcome and failed to maintain the quality of the first movie in the series. If the inevitable “Smile” sequels turn out to be mindless trash dumps, at least people can still enjoy the first “Smile” movie as an example of a horror movie done right.

“Smile” (the feature-film debut of writer/director Parker Finn) takes a simple concept and turns it into a tension-filled thriller that has more going on than just a series of gruesome deaths. There’s also a bona fide mystery-solving aspect to the story that will hold viewers’ interest. “Smile” doesn’t waste time getting to the bloody horror, because the first death happens in the first 10 minutes of the movie.

“Smile” begins by showing protagonist Dr. Rose Cotter (played by Sosie Bacon) at her job as a clinical psychiatrist at Mount Pleasant Hospital in Newark, New Jersey. (The movie was filmed on location in New Jersey.) Rose thinks of herself as a calm and analytical professional who can handle almost anything that comes her way. Her life is about to be turned upside down with the arrival of a patient who ends up killing herself in front of Rose.

Before that patient arrives at the hospital, the movie shows that Rose is the type of medical professional who is compassionate to people who don’t have health insurance. She gets called into the office of her immediate supervisor, Dr. Morgan Desai (played by Kal Penn), who mildly reprimands her for not giving him advance notice about Rose treating a patient who has no health insurance and who has a history of mania and drug abuse. Rose lets Dr. Desai know that she’s annoyed by the corporate, profit-oriented way of treating patients. She believes that giving people the best health care possible should be more important than whether or not people can afford to pay for treatment through health insurance.

One of Rose’s current patients is a man named Carl Renken (played by Jack Sochet), who keeps repeating things out loud such as, “Mom’s going to die. I’m going to die. We’re all going to die.” Carl seems to be living in his own world that’s removed from reality, because he doesn’t communicate much except to make these ominous death statements. Rose has diagnosed Carl with having “manic episodes.”

Rose is soon called to attend to a graduate student named Laura Weaver (played by Caitlin Stasey), who appears to be having a psychotic break with reality. Laura has been brought to the hospital for the first time for a psychiatric evaluation. Laura is fully conscious, but she’s rambling about how she’s being stalked by something that wants to kill her. Before Rose sees Laura in an observation room, Rose is quickly told that just a week before, Laura experienced the trauma of witnessing her art history professor Gabriel Muñoz bludgeoning himself to death with a hammer.

Rose and Laura are alone together in an observation room, where Rose interviews Laura for an evaluation. Laura says to Rose, “I’m a Ph.D. candidate. I’m not some lunatic.” Laura then tells Rose with fear in her voice: “I’m seeing something—something that no one else can see. It looks like different people.” Laura then describes that this “something” disguises itself as people she knows and people who are total strangers.

“It wears people’s faces likes masks,” Laura continues. And how does Laura know she’s in the presence of this indescribable entity? Laura says that this “something” makes itself known when Laura sees it in the form of a person who has a very menacing and creepy smile on that person’s face.

Suddenly, Laura screams out in terror and acts as if an unseen entity is attacking her. Laura writhes around on the floor and continues screaming, as if she’s fighting for her life against something that Rose can’t see. Some glass in the room gets broken during the process. Rose quickly goes to use a phone on the wall to call for emergency backup.

In order to use the phone, Rose had to temporarily turn her back to Laura. When Rose turns around, she sees Laura, who is now silent, standing up with an eerie smile on her face. And without saying a word, Laura uses the glass to fatally slit her throat in front of Rose.

The two police officers who arrive at the hospital to investigate are Detective Buckley (played by Perry Strong) and a guy named Joel (played by Kyle Gallner), who happens to be an ex-boyfriend of Rose. Detective Buckley, who is the older and more jaded cop partner, uses a lot of insensitive language to describe mentally ill people. Joel, who is the junior partner, asks some questions, but he lets Detective Buckley take the lead in the interviewing.

After this rough day, Rose goes home to try and relax. She lives alone and has a male cat named Moustache, who is friendly and adorable. It’s later revealed that Rose been working 60-hour weeks for the past several weeks, with no vacation time off. It’s why, when she starts to have her own mental unraveling, her boss thinks it’s the direct result of Rose being overworked.

Rose is so on edge when she gets home, she startled when her loving and supportive fiancé Trevor (played by Jessie T. Usher) shows up. She tells him about losing a patient that day, but she doesn’t go into the gory details. Trevor hugs and comforts her and asks her if there’s anything he can do. She says his hug is a good start.

Over time, viewers see that Rose has a pattern of trying to hide any pain or trauma that she might be feeling, which is why she doesn’t tell Trevor everything right away about the circumstances under which Laura died during Rose’s brief encounter with Laura. Rose’s workaholic ways and wanting to project an image of being a strong, independent woman eventually take their toll on her mental health when she begins to believe that something evil is trying to kill her.

If “Smile” has any big flaws, it’s the over-used horror cliché of “the woman who is not believed and labeled as mentally ill.” That’s essentially what goes on during the last half of “Smile,” as Rose becomes more and more convinced that she will be soon murdered by an evil entity that other people can’t see. However, some things happen along the way that make it look like Rose is the one who’s dangerous. Rose eventually has to get psychiatric help and starts seeing a therapist named Dr. Madeline Northcott (played by Robin Weigert), who tries to remain neutral, but Dr. Northcott also begins to question Rose’s sanity.

One of the best things about “Smile” is that it doesn’t make Rose a hollow character who just has nightmares or runs around looking terrified. Rose has an entire backstory that is eventually revealed. Without giving away too much information, it’s enough to say that Rose is still reeling from the trauma of her single mother committing suicide when Rose was 10 years old.

Rose has an older sister named Holly (played by Gillian Zinser), who was an adult who had already moved out of the family home when their mother killed herself. Holly, who still lives in New Jersey, is now a wife, homemaker and the mother of a son named Jackson (played by Matthew Lamb), who turns 7 years old during the course of the story. Holly is a domineering spouse to her husband Greg (played by Nick Arapoglou), who is as materialistic as Holly is.

For example, Greg and Holly don’t understand why Rose won’t take their advice to open up a private practice so that Rose can get a much higher salary than what she makes at the hospital. During a dinner that Rose and Trevor have with Holly and Greg at a restaurant, Greg tells Rose that the main reason to become a doctor should be to get rich. Trevor defends Rose by saying that Rose isn’t a doctor for the money and that she loves being a doctor so much, she would be a doctor for free.

A more emotional and touchier subject with this family is that Holly and Greg disagree with Rose about what to do with the property that has the run-down and abandoned house where Rose and Holly used to live as children. Rose apparently co-owns the property with Holly, but Rose refuses to sign off on selling the house, or tearing down the house and selling the land. And as soon as it’s mentioned that there’s a run-down and abandoned house in a horror movie, you just know that there’s going to be at least one scene that takes place in that run-down and abandoned house.

Meanwhile, viewers find out that Joel isn’t completely over Rose, who broke up with him in a period of time that is not specified in the movie. Joel already knows that Rose is engaged to another man. However, Joel appears to still be in love with Rose, which explains why he shows up unannounced at the hospital the day after Laura’s suicide, to check in on Rose and ask her how she’s doing.

At first, Rose gives Joel a polite but firm brushoff. But later, when strange and disturbing things start happening to Rose, she asks for Joel’s help in investigating what Laura told Rose before Laura committed suicide. Joel agrees to help Rose in his off-duty time. Professor Gabriel Muñoz’s widow Victoria Muñoz (played by Judy Reyes) and a prisoner named Robert Talley (played by Rob Morgan) offer some big clues along the way in this investigation.

“Smile” has many talented cast members, but Bacon is the obvious standout in her portrayal of Rose, a character that has to carry the movie with a variety of believable emotions and various stages of terror. Writer/director Finn brings a foreboding tone and pace to “Smile” that doesn’t ease up on any of the tension. And thankfully, the movie sticks to an uncomplicated concept that doesn’t get distracted or cluttered by too many characters and subplots. The movie also injects some comic relief in a few scenes, mostly coming from Joel’s comments.

But make no mistake: “Smile” is a movie that is definitely not for very young children or people who are easily agitated by seeing very hideous death scenes. One of the main things that will keep viewers on edge and invested in the story is finding out exactly what is the cause of the terror in this movie. “Smile” does not disappoint when that mystery is revealed.

The movie could have ended in several different ways. The ending that was chosen is ultimately the one that packs a major wallop that many viewers will not see coming. And just like many original horror movies that leave a huge impression on audiences, “Smile” is poised to spawn multiple sequels for people who want the terrifying story to continue.

Paramount Pictures released “Smile” in U.S. cinemas on September 30, 2022, with a sneak preview in select U.S. cinemas on September 27, 2022.

Review: ‘The Guilty’ (2021), starring Jake Gyllenhaal

March 3, 2022

by Carla Hay

Jake Gyllenhaal in “The Guilty” (Photo courtesy of Netflix)

“The Guilty” (2021)

Directed by Antoine Fuqua

Culture Representation: Taking place primarily in Los Angeles, the dramatic film “The Guilty” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with a few African Americans, Asians and Latinos) representing the middle-class.

Culture Clash: A police officer, who has been demoted to 911 operator duties, gets a harrowing phone call from a woman who says she’s in a vehicle and she’s been kidnapped, and the police officer breaks protocol to try to help her. 

Culture Audience: “The Guilty” will appeal primarily to people interested in thrillers that have many twists and turns, with some plot developments more believable than others.

Jake Gyllenhaal in “The Guilty” (Photo by Glen Wilson/Netflix)

Gripping and tension-filled, “The Guilty” succeeds in creating a suspenseful story with good acting, even though some parts of the movie are hard to believe and seem too contrived. Unfolding in “real time,” it’s a story about an intense two-hour period in the life of a police officer while he’s on 911 emergency call operator duties. During the course of the story, he frantically tries to save an adult female caller who claims that her ex-husband has kidnapped her in a vehicle. “The Guilty” had its world premiere at the 2021 Toronto International Film Festival.

Directed by Antoine Fuqua and written by Nic Pizzolatto, “The Guilty” is a remake of the 2018 Danish film “The Guilty” (“Den Skyldige”), which was co-written and directed by Gustav Möller as Möller’s feature-film debut. By most accounts and critics’ reviews, the original Danish movie is better than the American version. However, the American version of “The Guilty” is still a satisfying thriller for anyone who can tolerate a movie where most of it is centered on a not-very-likable protagonist working as an emergency phone operator in a call center.

The American version of “The Guilty” adheres very close to the original story in the Danish version on “The Guilty.” There are some questionable things in the American version that might be more acceptable or overlooked in Denmark because of different laws and policies when it comes to emergency call operators and what cops can and cannot do while on duty. The American movie was filmed during the COVID-19 pandemic before a COVID-19 vaccine existed. Because almost the entire setting of the movie is a call center and consists of phone conversations, it turns out those were ideal conditions to film during a pre-vaccine COVID-19 pandemic.

In the American version of “The Guilty,” Joe Baylor (played by Jake Gyllenhaal) is a Los Angeles police officer who’s under a great deal of stress. Joe has been assigned 911 call operator duties because he’s been temporarily demoted. And he’s not happy about it. The reason for Joe’s demotion is revealed toward the end of the film. Joe has asthma and uses an inhaler. Not surprisingly, his asthmatic condition is aggravated by all the stress he goes through during the course of the story.

Even without this demotion, it’s obvious from the beginning of the film that Joe is someone with a short temper. When he gets a call from a bicycle rider who injured himself in an accident and has called 911 to request an ambulance, Joe scolds the injured person and tells him not to ride a bike when he’s drunk. And then Joe hangs up. Joe has no proof that the caller is intoxicated. His lack of empathy and the way he jumps to conclusions with anger are indications that he’s a “loose cannon.”

Adding to the stress level at the call center, a wildfire is raging in Los Angeles County, so there’s a shortage of emergency workers who can respond to calls that aren’t related to the fire. The 911 call center has TV monitors tuned into the local news to keep track of the wildfire situation. This wildfire is a plot development that was added to the American version of “The Guilty.”

Joe gets some other calls in the beginning of the movie that show how he’s ill-tempered and impatient with callers. When Joe talks to a male caller who’s having a panic attack, and the caller admits that he’s high on meth, Joe says he’ll send an ambulance as well as police to arrest him. The caller quickly hangs up.

Joe takes another call about a computer stolen from a rental car. He quickly determines that the caller whose computer was stolen was involved in a sex worker transaction that went wrong. Joe concludes that the sex worker probably stole the computer, so Joe is unsympathetic to the theft victim. Throughout the movie, viewers see that Joe cannot be an impartial phone operator and he acts like an investigative cop who reaches his own conclusions when he might not know all the facts.

The first big clue that Joe is involved in a high-profile matter is the movie’s opening scene, when he gets a call on his cell phone from a female Los Angeles Times reporter, who wants to interview him. Joe abruptly tells her that he has no comment, and he hangs up. People who work at call centers generally aren’t allowed to use their cell phones while they’re on duty in the call center, so it’s also the first sign that Joe thinks that the call center’s policies don’t really apply to him.

Joe’s sense of entitlement becomes even more apparent later in the story when Joe goes beyond what a 911 call operator is allowed to do, and he acts like a cop who wants to solve a case and be a hero rescuer. For example, emergency call centers, such as the one depicted in “The Guilty,” usually have a policy of using only the authorized, monitored phones to help a caller. But there’s a scene in the movie when Joe breaks this policy by sneaking off to an empty office room to make secret phone calls that can’t be recorded.

Joe is also standoffish or rude to any of the other 911 operators he interacts with, including a friendly co-worker named Manny (played by Adrian Martinez) and a supervisor named Riva (played by Becky Wu), who seems to just let Joe do what he wants because he’s a cop. The only time that Joe is shown being somewhat nice to his colleagues is when he wants a favor from someone. But even then, it’s only after he finds out that getting angry at them won’t help him get what he wants.

Even though he has a mostly dismissive attitude toward his work colleagues, there is one colleague whom Joe seems to care about: his cop partner Rick (voiced by Eli Goree), whom Joe later describes as his best friend. While Joe is at the call center, he calls his police supervisor Sgt. Bill Miller (voiced by Ethan Hawke) to ask how Rick is doing. What’s wrong with Rick that has gotten Joe so concerned about Rick’s well-being? That answer is also revealed toward the end of the movie.

It’s eventually shown that things aren’t going so well for Joe in his personal life. He’s been separated from his wife Jess (voiced by Gillian Zinser) for the past six months, and he doesn’t get to see their young daughter as often as he would like. Joe seems to want to get back together with Jess, but she’s very reluctant and seems to be fed up with him. During a phone call, Jess tells Joe that she won’t be there for his upcoming court appearance that’s happening the next morning.

Joe’s personal problems temporarily take a back seat when he becomes consumed with the kidnapping call. The female caller identifies herself as Emily Lighton (voiced by Riley Keough), and she says she’s been abducted by her ex-husband, who’s driving the two of them in a white van. Through some quick detective work of looking up the cell phone number that Emily is using, Joe finds out that the ex-husband is named Henry Fisher (voiced by Peter Sarsgaard), and Henry has a criminal record.

There’s an additional urgency to this phone call because Emily and Henry have two underage children who are home alone: a 6-year-old daughter named Abby (voiced by Christiana Montoya) and an infant son named Oliver. The biggest problem in locating Emily is that she doesn’t know the license plate number of the van, and she doesn’t know exactly where she is on the road because she says she can’t look out of any of the van’s windows. The rest of the movie is about Joe’s race-against-time in his efforts to save Emily. There are some twists and turns (some more shocking than others) that happen along the way.

“The Guilty” requires some suspension of disbelief when showing Joe as the only person who seems to care the most about finding this alleged kidnapping victim. However, the movie’s plot addition of the wildfire happening at the same time does make it plausible that emergency responders have to give priority to the fire at that time. There are some parts of the movie where Joe steps way over the line of police ethics when he plays judge and jury in his reactions. But when more details about Joe’s personal problems are revealed, it’s actually consistent with his personality and past actions that he acts this way.

Gyllenhaal is the only actor seen on screen for most of the film, so his compelling performance is effective in depicting this anxiety-ridden situation. The voice actors in the cast also perform capably in their roles. The last 15 minutes of the movie cram in a lot of melodrama that might have some viewers rolling their eyes in disbelief. However, stranger things and more melodramatic things have happened in real life, so the movie isn’t completely far-fetched.

After it’s revealed why Joe is going to court, a few questions remain unanswered at the end of the movie, such as: “How or why was Joe allowed to work in law enforcement in this capacity, considering what he’s being accused of in court? And what kind of attorney (it’s presumed that Joe has an attorney) would allow a client to work in this high-stress environment the day before an important court appearance?”

There are some believable explanations, of course. Maybe the police department didn’t want to suspend Joe, for whatever reason, and demoted him instead. And maybe Joe is the type of stubborn person who wouldn’t take an attorney’s advice and thinks he could handle working in a stressful job the day before his court appearance.

As for how realistically “The Guilty” depicts 911 call centers and 911 phone operators, the podcast Real Crime Profile interviewed two real-life former 911 phone operators to get their perspectives of the American version of “The Guilty.” (Spoiler alert: This podcast episode discusses everything that happens in the movie.) These former 911 operators say that “The Guilty” is mostly accurate.

Fuqua (whose directorial credits include “Training Day” and “The Equalizer” movies) and Pizzolatto (the Emmy-nominated creator of HBO’s “True Detective” series) are very familiar with telling stories about law enforcement officers who operate outside the law to solve a case or to get what the cops want. “The Guilty” tells an intriguing story, but some viewers might be bored that most of the movie takes place in one location, and the on-camera action mostly centers on a series of phone calls. People who can appreciate “The Guilty” the most are those who use their imagination, because a lot of the terror is what’s not seen on screen.

Netflix released “The Guilty” in select U.S. cinemas on September 24, 2021. The movie premiered on Netflix on October 1, 2021.

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