When the horror histories of the 2010s are written, the decade will be associated with trauma metaphors the way the â80s are with slasher movies. And although it comes on the cusp of a new decade, the new Paramount wide-release horror movie “Smile” fits right in with its PTSD-induced kin.
When the horror histories of the 2010s are written, the decade will be associated with trauma metaphors the way the â80s are with slasher movies. And although it comes on the cusp of a new decade, the new Paramount wide-release horror movie “Smile” fits right in with its PTSD-induced kin. The difference here is that the monster is barely a metaphor at all: The demon, or evil spirit, or whatever it isâthe movie is vague on this pointâliterally feeds on, and is spread by, trauma.
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Specifically, the vague something that dogs Dr. Rose Cotter (Sosie Bacon) throughout âSmileâ likes the taste of people who have witnessed someone else dying by suicideâgruesome, painful, bloody suicide, by garden shears and oncoming trains and the shattered fragments of a ceramic vase in a hospital intake room. Thatâs where Rose briefly meets Laura (Caitlin Stasey), a PhD student whoâs brought to the psychiatric emergency ward where Rose works, shaking and terrified that something is out to get her. âIt looks like people, but itâs not a person,â Laura explains, saying that this thing has been following her ever since she witnessed one of her professors bludgeoning himself to death with a hammer four days earlier. At the end of the extended dialogue scene that opens the film, Laura turns to Rose with a psychotic grin on her face and proceeds to slit her own throat.