Rose never visited the hobby shop to buy the toy train for her nephew
The Smile Entity is shown to be able to alter its victim's perception of reality. With that in mind, it's possible that the entire scene in which Rose stops at a hobby shop to buy a toy train for her nephew's birthday was all a hallucination brought on by the Entity. In reality, instead of going to the hobby shop, Rose went straight home, killed her cat, and put it in a gift box. Afterwards, the hallucination wore off and Rose began wrapping what she thought was the toy train. The film seems to hint at this during the hobby shop scene when the camera tilts down to show an image of a smiling family, implying that the Smile Entity is in control here.The only way to defeat the entity is to kill yourself with no witnesses.
If you kill yourself without a witness, there will be no one for the entity to pass into. Witnessing the aftermath of a suicide is traumatic but not as much as witnessing the act itself. One can only hope that Joel realized this and sacrificed himself to break the curse once and for all.- Alternatively, this would be met with the same trick that Rose's attempt at isolation was - just conjure a hallucination of committing suicide, and instead use it to keep the target sedate until a witness happens along.
Alternate way to defeat the Smile Entity- Kill its host
Rose is able to track the Smile entity's path. An investigator could do the same, and then work to arrange for the entity to wind up in a particular host, say, a criminal condemned to state execution, and then, once the entity is in the new host, simply kill that host.- Odds are the trauma of murdering someone — even as a mercy to the victim — would be traumatizing enough that the murderer would be its next victim.
The Smile Entity exists only in Rose's mind, and "Smile" is a first-person view of Rose's descent into insanity.
We know early on that there seems to be a tendency for mental illness in Rose's family and that Rose has been under a ton of stress in dealing with the trauma of her mom's death, her sister, and on top of all that, her job caring for mental patients. Perhaps having a much more violently insane patient suddenly go off the rails and kill herself right in her office triggered a series of increasingly violent delusions. The previous suicide chain may be the result of an Unreliable Narrator, plus Rose's grabbing some random death-scene photos from her ex's evidence files.The Smile Entity is the same species as Room 1408 and the Lasser Glass.
Considering all three have the ability to control their victims' sense of reality and seem to have no reason to kill aside from just for the heck of it, it's entirely possible that the Smile Entity belongs to the same species as Room 1408 and the Lasser Glass.Perhaps this species can change its physical form so that it can kill its victims in a way that works best for each individual creature. With this in mind, it's possible that the Smile Entity's "true form" isn't its species real true form, but instead just the form it decides to take on immediately before killing its victim because it's the most frightening form it can think of in order to deal the finishing blow to its victim's mental state.
- Room 1408 takes on the form of a hotel room where it lies in wait until its prey comes directly to it of their own free will.
- The Lasser Glass takes on the form of a decorative mirror so that it can be taken from one location to another, with a new batch of unsuspecting victims waiting for it.
- The Smile Entity takes a more direct approach, attaching itself to its prey and taking on the form of different people that are familiar to the victim and tormenting them until they've been mentally broken down enough to be possessed into taking their own life, allowing it to move on to its next victim.
Alternatively, the Smile Entity is the same or similar species as the entity from It Follows.
They are both "psychic parasites" of a sort that feed off of the intensity of human emotion. In the case of Smile, violent trauma. In the case of It Follows, sexual passion.If a sequel is made, the ending will involve a proper face off with the Entity
The movie has made nearly $200 million, so a sequel is pretty much guaranteed. This sequel will try to quell the Downer Ending of this film by featuring an inverted message, specifically that people can overcome their guilt and trauma through a proper healing process.Traumatizing Rose's nephew wasn't just collateral damage for The Entity
Judging by the fact that Rose, Laura, and the professor all had traumatic incidents involving death in their pasts, it could be that the Entity is deliberately setting up Rose's nephew Jackson to be a potential future victim. The Entity has an incentive to make not only its victim's deaths, but also their last few days as horrific as possible in order to spread misery and give itself a bigger pool of carriers.Jackson, Rose's nephew, will be the protagonist of the sequel
Given how he a terrifying sight on his birthday along with a shot that where the camera suddenly focuses on Jackson. The film seems to deliberately set up him up as the main character of the second movie. Assuming of course, it won't be Joel.The Entity is the Vengeful Ghost of a suicide victim.
It's referred to a "ghost" several times and its actions could qualify as a "haunting", though it haunts people instead of objects or locations. With this in mind, its entire M.O. can be a reflection of the circumstances of its death, not unlike the Saeki Family from The Grudge or Sadako from The Ring. So this is the theory in action: the Entity was once a person who suffered from mental illness brought on by trauma (hens why it latches onto traumatized individual) and had lived its life as a Stepford Smiler in a vein attempt at repressing its negative emotions. Eventually, its unprocessed repression led to anxiety and depression that would eventually drive them to suicide. The tragic nature of its death made it manifest as a Ghastly Ghost that would act on its curse in a neverending cycle, losing what remaining humanity it had and becoming unrecognizable as a Humanoid Abomination after existing for as long as it did.