fbpx
Home
Reviews
Movies

SMILE

"Gruesome Occult Scarefest"

Content: -4 Intentional blasphemy, evil, gross immorality, and/or worldview problems. (To be avoided)
Entertainment Quality:
NoneLightModerateHeavy
Language
Violence
Sex
Nudity

Credits →

What You Need To Know:

SMILE is another horror movie about a demonic spirit haunting people. Dr. Rose Carter is a hospital psychiatrist. One day, a graduate student is admitted, says she’s being haunted by some kind of demonic spirit and commits suicide right in front of Rose. Of course, now the demonic spirit starts to haunt Rose. She learns that the student recently witnessed the suicide of one of her college professors. Eventually, things go from bad to worse. Meanwhile, Rose enlists the help of her former fiancé, a cop, to trace the college professor’s recent history.

SMILE is effective in delivering the scares to frighten moviegoers, but its goals seem to be limited to just doing that. Also, the movie’s unsatisfying ending offers no real relief from those scares and no victory over the demon. That’s not surprising since Rose never turns to God or the Bible, much less to Jesus Christ or a Christian pastor, to defeat the demon. SMILE also has lots of strong foul language and gruesome violence. MOVIEGUIDE® can’t think of a good reason for moviegoers to see this abhorrent, unsatisfying movie.

Content:

(OOO, HH, LLL, VVV, S, A, MM):

Dominant Worldview and Other Worldview Content/Elements:
Thoroughly occult worldview about a demon haunting and possessing people and causing a chain of suicides, with no Christian or biblical solutions offered to oppose or defeat the demon, and all the solutions used by the victims and would-be victims are vaguely occult or humanist solutions (including humanist/secular psychiatric ones)

Foul Language:
About 57 obscenities (about 35 or so “f” words), three Jesus profanities, one GD profanity, and five light profanities (such as OMG)

Violence:
Some extreme, gruesome, strong violence includes possessed people slit their own throats or deliberately smash their heads in front of people, photo shown of a man’s smashed mouth from his self-afflicted wound, demon stalks woman, many scary images of demon and involving demon, boy discovers the body of a dead cat in a birthday present he unwarps, woman falls through glass table and cuts both her arms

Sex:
No sex scenes, but woman lives with her new fiancé

Nudity:
No nudity but woman appears in a black halter bra

Alcohol Use:
Some alcohol use, including to steady one’s nerves

Smoking and/or Drug Use and Abuse:
No smoking or drugs; and,

Miscellaneous Immorality:
Woman’s current fiancé is not fully supportive, lying, flashback shows scared girl deliberately leaving her suicidal mother asking for her to call someone for help, elements of family dysfunction.

More Detail:

SMILE is another horror movie about a demonic spirit haunting people, and this time it’s a female psychiatrist working at a hospital who tries to treat a new patient, who gruesomely commits suicide right in front of her. SMILE is effective in delivering the scares to frighten moviegoers, but the unsatisfying ending offers no real relief from those scares and no victory over the demon, and the movie has lots of strong foul language and gruesome violence.

Dr. Rose Carter is a psychiatrist working at a hospital. One day, a distraught graduate student named Laura is admitted, and Rose starts talking with Laura to discover what’s bothering her. Laura says she’s being haunted by some kind of spirit who poses as friends, relatives and strangers. The people just give her a haunting, disturbing smile. When Rose confronts Laura about her crazy story, Laura angrily denies that she’s hallucinating. Suddenly, Laura is standing up and smiling back at Rose, then slits her own throat.

Rose is traumatized by the event but tells her boss and the police that she’s okay. One of the detectives assigned to the case is Rose’s former fiancé, Joel.

Of course, now the violent demonic spirit starts to haunt Rose. She learns that four days ago, Laura witnessed the suicide of one of her college professors. Eventually, things go from bad to worse, and Rose becomes distraught herself. So much so that her boss and her current fiancé, Trevor, begin to think Rose needs to be committed.

Rose enlists Joel’s help in tracing the history behind the college professor’s suicide. Can Rose find the answer to stopping the demon?

SMILE is effective in delivering the scares to frighten moviegoers, but its goals seem to be limited to just doing that. Also, the unsatisfying ending offers no real relief from those scares and no victory over the demon. That’s not surprising since at no point during the story does Rose turn to God or the Bible, much less to Jesus or a Christian pastor, to oppose and defeat the demon. Instead of confronting the demon with Christian or biblical things, the victims and would-be victims in SMILE use vaguely occult solutions or humanist solutions to defeat him, such as humanist/secular psychiatric solutions. At one point, Rose even considers murdering someone to break the demon’s spell of suicidal ideation.

SMILE also has lots of strong foul language and gruesome violence. Finally, Rose lives with her new fiancé, and he’s not very supportive. In fact, the movie suggests, through Rose’s interactions with him, that he’s not very supportive because he has a totally humanist/secular, skeptical worldview about demons and the supernatural. Considering this, it’s perplexing why the filmmakers don’t have any of the characters turn to any religion, not just Christianity, to deal with the demon.

MOVIEGUIDE® can’t think of a good reason for moviegoers to go see this abhorrent, unsatisfying movie.



Share: