‘Smile’ rolls out a horror welcome mat

 

  Smile marks the feature debut of Parker Finn. As many before him, Finn has chosen horror as his letter of introduction. 

   Expanded from a short film by Finn,  Smile doesn’t transcend genre but aims for more than jump scares, creep-outs, and gore — although it has a reasonable amount of all three. 

   Staring Sosie Bacon in a disturbingly agitated performance, the movie attempts to show what happens when a sane person tries to convince others of something that most normal people would regard as crazy. Good luck with that.

    Of course, there’s not much good luck on display in Smile. You might even say that the movie is about the bad fortune that may spring from a dark secret, something that Bacon’s character assiduously has tried to avoid.

      Bacon’s Rose is a psychiatrist who works with severely disturbed patients. She’s not one to listen while bored Gen Xers complain about lack of fulfillment. She’s up for the heavy lift.

     In an early scene,  Rose tries to assure a terrified young woman that she’s not going to die. The newly admitted patient claims that she’s a serious person, a Ph.D. candidate who’s not crazy. 

     Her story: A mysterious entity appears to this young woman in the form of different people. These appearances — seen only by her and  mistaken by others for hallucinations — have an evil smile plastered across their faces, devilish concierges welcoming guests to hell.

    A skeptical Rose begins to question her judgment when her patient commits suicide in front of her, slashing her throat with pieces of a broken vase.

   The movie plays with a notion that’s familiar to those who consider themselves “normal” — or at least capable of operating within the bounds of acceptability: What has been seen cannot be unseen.

    Written by Finn, the movie also weaves an ingenious thread through its story: Those who witness a suicide become the “entity’s” next victim, the next person doomed to be regarded as crazy until the demon (or whatever it is) forces suicide and migrates to its next witnessing host. The cycle of terror becomes perpetual.

       The movie rests on Bacon’s shoulders and she carries it with a bit of assistance from the supporting cast. Rose’s supportive finance (Jessie. T. Usher) believes his prospective wife may have gone ‘round sanity’s bend. Kyle Gallner plays Joel, a former lover and detective who’s drawn into Rose’s drama. Robin Weigert portrays Rose’s therapist. She thinks Rose’s condition might have something to do with her mother, who committed suicide when Rose was a girl.

     Kal Penn turns up as Rose’s boss at the mental institution where she works, and Gillian Zinser appears as Rose’s older sister, a woman who’s mortified and alarmed by Rose’s behavior at her nephew’s seventh birthday party, one of the movie’s horror high points.

      Finn probably relies too much on the movie’s score (alternately creepy or bludgeoning) and errs at the end, I think, when he shows the monster. It should have remained invisible, even if a bit of metaphoric intent is at play here. 

      We already see the story from Rose’s point-of-view. But what if we left the theater with more uncertainty?

      I’ve seen Smile described as better than the usual helping of horror and that seems right. I’ll leave it that, offering restrained appreciation for a movie that isn’t without intelligence but still too beholden to the more obvious demands of its genre.

Bob's cinema diary: 4/8/'19 Dogman and Charlie Says

Dogman

Marcello (Marcello Fonte) earns his living grooming dogs. But in the rundown Italian coastal town where Marcello lives, this simple occupation may not be enough to support an estranged wife and a young daughter. So Marcello occasionally sells cocaine. The great irony of director Matteo Garrone's Dogman centers on Marcello’s personality. Cocaine or no, he hardly seems a typical gangster. He's a simple, good-hearted fellow who tries to get along with everyone, including the town bully (Edoardo Pesce). Pesce's Simone becomes a kind of one-man scourge, attacking people, destroying property and generally terrorizing the town's residents. He's so much a nuisance that one of the town’s businessmen go so far as to propose that an assassin be hired. As the story unfolds, Garrone (Gomorrah) turns Marcello into an unfortunate sap whose innocence and rudimentary sense of honor only add to his troubles. Garrone’s narrative builds toward an explosive ending that leaves Marcello alone and abandoned against the decaying landscape of the town where he has tried so hard to fit in. Those familiar with Garrone's work will be tempted to read metaphorical meanings into a simple tale that takes place against a backdrop of ruined buildings. As we follow Marcello's story, hope gradually gives way to feelings of abandonment. Marcello displays sweet affection for dogs and for his daughter. Even so, Garrone refuses to see life in Italy (and perhaps beyond) through a lens tinted by optimism. In Dogman, Marcello’s love for others goes largely unrequited.

Charlie Says

Rather than try to explain Charles Manson, director Mary Harron's Charlie Says concentrates on Manson’s spell-binding relationship with the women who ultimately carried out or abetted him in the Tate/LaBianca murders, endlessly discussed crimes that left an indelible mark on American culture. The movie focuses on three women: Leslie Van Houten (Hannah Murray), Patricia Krenwinkel (Sosie Bacon) and Susan Atkins (Marianne Rendon). After immersing in the cult-like atmosphere of the Manson family's California commune, Harron brings us to the murders. She follows the carnage with a lengthy section in which a teacher (Merritt Wever) tries to help each of the women -- by then imprisoned in maximum security -- achieve some degree of self-realization. Perhaps this is where the movie should have started. At it stands, Harron (American Psycho) doesn't provide a compelling enough reason for taking another drive through Manson country. And without more context, the free-floating atmosphere of the '60s -- manifested mostly through sex, drugs and the charisma Manson (Matt Smith) supposedly projected -- seems a trifle ridiculous. Last week, I wondered whether we needed another film about Ted Bundy (Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile). I had my doubts, but in this case, it seemed clear that Charlie Says doesn't offer enough by way of insight to answer the question that inevitably seems to arise with movies about heinous crimes, particularly those that already have been the subject of enough books and movies to qualify as an industry: Exactly why am I watching?