As a Nightmare Fuel page, all spoilers are unmarked as per wiki policy. You Have Been Warned!
It may not be groundbreaking, but Smile is hailed as one of (if not the) the scariest films of 2022 because of its creative scares and building tension— for spookily good reasons.
- A lot of the movie's cinematography is disorienting, which helps to capture the uncertainty of what will happen next.
- The film bluntly opens on an overdosed mother who seemingly died on her bed. The camera pans out to reveal her daughter had seen what had happened in the doorway until it cuts to Rose in an office. Setting the bleak and depressing tone for the rest of the film.
- The Smiles. JUST THE SMILES. The Enitity smiles in such a clearly malicious way that crosses deep into the Uncanny Valley.
- Carl, the first onscreen patient we see Rose consult, begins to repeat some truly harsh facts about "She's gonna die, Mom's gonna die, I'm gonna die, she doesn't matter, nobody matters" over and over again. Once Rose finally gets him to stop and talk about his issues, he describes the feeling of despair as an all-encompassing force that he can't escape.
- This scene and the opening convey to us that while the film's main threat and premise is a supernatural one, its exploration of trauma, grief, and despair is very much grounded in reality.
- Laura Weaver's death. While in Rose's office, she has a complete mental breakdown and tries to move away from something before having a fatal seizure. The next time Rose sees Laura, she's just standing there, smiling and holding a shard of a vase that she broke. She then cuts the shape of a smile into her left cheek and her neck—all while blood gushes out of the wound in large quantities. And that eerie smile never goes away...
- In the morgue, the bloodstain on the blanket covering her corpse is in the shape of the Glasgow Smile she carved.
- One scene has the Entity open the back door of Rose's house to set off an alarm in her security system—which doubles as a Jump Scare. However, things truly descend into spine-chilling territory when it makes Rose imagine a call from a First Line Security dispatcher that takes a sinister turn:Rose: Hello?
First Line dispatcher: This is First Line Security. May I have your name and the passcode?
Rose: Uh, Rose Cotter. Um, Acapulco.
First Line dispatcher: Ma'am, we've detected a door alarm.
Rose: Yeah, uh... the... the back door of my... house is open.
First Line dispatcher: Are you alone in the house, ma'am?
Rose: Yes.
Entity!First Line dispatcher: Are you sure?
Rose: ...what?
Entity!First Line dispatcher: Are you sure you hadn't let something inside, Rose? Look Behind You.- Shakily breathing, Rose slowly turns around to see whatever or whoever could be there... and that's when the sound of her real house phone ringing ends the Imagine Spot. The fake house phone she's holding in her right hand vanishes offscreen.
- At night, Rose is listening to an audio recording of her conversation with Laura on her computer when she hears her name being faintly whispered. She replays that part of the recording to be sure she isn't imagining it, but before Rose can hear the whispering again on the second replay... the Entity appears on her left in the form of a red-haired woman that shouts "ROSE!" She understandably screams in terror and falls out of the dining chair she's sitting in.
- Probably the scariest part of the scene is the sound design and how it plays with your expectation. It forces the viewer to listen in on what Rose is trying to hear and makes you think the scare will be a purely auditory one. The fact that the jump scare is also a visual one, makes it even more surprising.
- The birthday party of Rose's nephew Jackson. In the scenes leading up to it, Rose isn't sure if she wants to attend the party due to what she's witnessed, but she ultimately decides to go out of goodwill and packs a toy train as a present. However, when Jackson opens the gift from her, he's greeted by Mustache's corpse instead. Rose immediately takes her dead cat away from Jackson while everyone freaks out—desperately attempting to convince them she didn't murder her feline companion. Things quickly go From Bad to Worse when she notices the Entity appearing as a smiling female partygoer (who the others can't see) and shouts at it to leave her alone. Its response is to teleport itself right in front of her, causing her to fall backwards in frightened shock through a glass table and injure her arms in the process. The Entity doesn't care about traumatizing kids so long as its current victim keeps suffering.
- Alternatively, given how the curse works on a second watch, it could be possible that the Entity did this in order to make sure it has a backup plan in case it was Out-Gambitted and defeated by Rose or whoever will be its next host. It already lost to Robert and it needs trauma to survive, so it deliberately set up the present so that Jackson would see the dead cat and be cursed along with EVERY OTHER CHILD INVOLVED in case its plans fell short and needed an emergency host. Jesus, first there's crossing the Moral Event Horizon, and then there's this.
- When Rose talks to Gabriel Muñoz's widow Victoria, we get a lovely look at his corpse. Specifically, a brief look at Gabriel's horribly mangled face after the Entity forced him to smile and bludgeon himself to death with a hammer in front of Laura.
- Honestly, the numerous ways that smiling victims have been forced to commit suicide should be noted here. Special mention goes to the man who stabbed himself with gardening shears in front of Angela Powell at a gas station.
- One scene features Rose being visited by Dr. Madeline Northcott at home, where they discuss the strange events haunting her. When her phone rings, Rose answers to hear that the real Dr. Northcott is on the other end. Cue Dr. Northcott in her living room smiling. She accidentally let the Entity into her house after it impersonated her therapist.
- What are the Entity's first words to her while talking in its real voice? "Almost time, Rose."
- While the scene itself may be rife with Black Comedy, Rose being pulled out of an Imagine Spot when she murders Carl while Dr. Desai watches is quite a startling moment. Especially since we're not sure if Rose imagined that scenario in her mind with the Entity taunting her, or if she did the deed, and it was all an Imagine Spot.
- Dr. Desai pulling his face off in said Imagine Spot. It's not a pretty sight, and not helping at all is that this foreshadows what the Entity does to reveal what it truly looks like.
- Everything about the Entity is absolutely horrifying. If you're unfortunate enough to cross paths with this thing, you've already sealed your fate. No matter what you do or where you go, it'll psychologically torture you for up to a week and then kill you in front of a witness to make sure its curse spreads.
- Even getting rid of its curse has more than its fair share of terror. You have to traumatize a witness by murdering someone in front of them. While you survive, you'll probably end up imprisoned for the killing. It's a Morton's Fork at its finest.
- Even doing so is not a guarantee you'll survive, as the Entity can just pull an Imagine Spot to make you go through the trauma and guilt of brutally murdering someone only to make you snap back to reality. The Entity isn't just evil, it's cruel.
- Which begs the question: how did Robert (the man who escaped the Entity by murdering someone) manage to do it? Did he get lucky? Did the Entity slip up somehow? Did it let him escape, knowing that it could use him as a false hope to more effectively terrorise future victims?
- Aside from the fact that it takes great pleasure in inflicting tremendous pain on humans and feeds on the trauma it causes them, we never learn what this thing actually is or where it came from. Could it be an angel, a demon, a ghost, an extraterrestrial being, something that arrived from some other reality, or an ancient primordial force?
- The Entity's true form (pictured above) will be permanently burnt into your mind. Running back into her childhood home and locking Joel out after finding out she was tricked by an elaborate Imagine Spot, Rose crosses over the Despair Event Horizon while the Entity corners her. It's a lanky mockery of her late mother for a short while before it tears its skin off, revealing itself to be a hideous, skinless humanoid creature with perfectly round, piercing eyes and a huge, smiling maw with many rows of teeth and gums nested inside... and the cherry on top is that UNGODLY ROAR it lets out in the process.
- For a body description, it towers Rose in height, resembles a flayed corpse, and its haunting appearance seems to invoke Go Mad from the Revelation along with You Cannot Grasp the True Form—causing Rose's mind to shut down completely.
- How does the Entity possess Rose? It forces its fingers into her open mouth and pulls on her lower jaw to stretch it even further, after which it climbs into her body.
- In the case of Rewatch Bonus, knowing that was the last thing Laura would ever see in her final seconds alive after everything she's been through makes her reaction understandable.
- Even getting rid of its curse has more than its fair share of terror. You have to traumatize a witness by murdering someone in front of them. While you survive, you'll probably end up imprisoned for the killing. It's a Morton's Fork at its finest.
- Joel gets to witness the Entity force Rose to douse herself in kerosene, turn around to show off a Slasher Smile, and light herself on fire with a match she strikes. His horrified reaction and the reflection of his burning ex-girlfriend in his eyes hammer in that he's next. Talk about a brutal Downer Ending.
- The whole movie is draped in a bleak and truly unsettling atmosphere that makes it borderline impossible for one to be at ease for even a second.
- The end credits themselves are even creepy, after luring you in with "Lolipop", the music becomes dark ambient with sudden and unsettling noises.
