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Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Smiley’ On Netflix, Where A Misdirected Voicemail Leads To New Love In Barcelona

Where to stream:, stream it or skip it: 'interview with the vampire' season 2 on amc, where louis and claudia go in search of fellow vampires in post-wwii europe, stream it or skip it: ‘eileen’ on hulu, a dark, sexy noir-thriller starring anne hathaway and thomasin mckenzie, nicholas galitzine admits to feeling "guilt" and "uncertainty" taking on gay roles as a straight actor , 'wwhl': mark indelicato recalls "nasty" reaction to his same-sex kiss on 'ugly betty'.

A hallmark of streaming romcom series is the couple that get together under unusual circumstances, whether it’s a one-night stand-turned-marriage ( Catastrophe ), a “regular girl” inadvertently hooking up with a movie star ( Starstruck ), or two sisters trying to figure out what and who they want in life  ( Vida ). Now a new Spanish romantic comedy on Netflix brings this formula to two guys who would likely never connect if it weren’t for a misdirected voicemail.

SMILEY : STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: We hear a phone ring, then an outgoing recording telling the person on the other side to leave a message. “I decided to call you in the end,” says a voice. Then we hear more from that voice as we see him wake up in the morning.

The Gist: Àlex (Carlos Cuevas) is a bartender in Barcelona, and he’s leaving an epically long message to his ex, several weeks after being ghosted by him. The message is full of talk about how he thought their relationship would be different, how he thought that the two of them had a connection and a real shot at something special. He also explains how the last thing that he texted to him in WhatsApp is a smiley emoji, which says a whole number of things.

One problem: Since he called the phone from the landline of the bar where he works, he actually had to dial the number. He ended up dialing the wrong number; instead of the ex, the epic voice mail lands in the inbox of an architect named Bruno (Miki Esparbé). Bruno is also looking for something real and lasting, and he’s been on the dating scene for what he feels like is way too long. He even ends up deleting Grindr, especially after some of the guys he matches with basically tell him to get lost.

He’s seriously thinking of returning the call and trying to meet Àlex. His best friend Albert (Eduardo Lloveras) and his wife Núria (Ruth Llopis) think he’s crazy. But when he takes the chance and calls Àlex at the bar, the two of them have a great conversation and decide to meet there.

In the meantime, Àlex’s friend Vero (Meritxell Calvo), who reminds him that he’s dated a parade of assholes with great abs, has her own issues: Her girlfriend Patri (Giannina Fruttero) is getting their new condo in shape and is really looking forward to their new phase in life. But Vero got a job offer to manage a club in Ibiza over the summer, something that also ticks off Javier (Pepón Nieto), who owns the bar with her. But when he performs as his drag persona Keena, he inadvertently lets the cat out of the bag… with Patri sitting in the crowd.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? The vibe of  Smiley feels pretty close to shows like  Vida and  Starstruck.

Our Take: One of the reasons why we cited those two shows above is because  Smiley  is about a relationship that starts off in a surprising way and has the potential to have really interesting ups and downs as the season goes on. You can tell from the first minutes of the episode that, while it feels like Bruno and Àlex are having a streaming-TV-ready meet-cute, the end of the episode shows us that the meet-cute is going to lead to a whole lot of emotional upheaval.

Why? Because when Àlex sees Bruno walking into the door at Bar Bero (so named because Vero convinced Javier to convert it from a barber shop into a bar), he says “Shit,” and not in a good way. He’s probably not attracted to Bruno at first, but he also knows in the back of his mind that the guys he’s been instantly attracted to have been the parade of assholes Vero talked to him about. So just the moments where the two guys get to know each other, with Àlex likely trying to figure out whether he should give Bruno a chance will make for some funny and romantic moments.

But writer Guillem Clua has done a good job of setting up the side characters with their own solid B-stories. We have Albert and Núria’s battle to get back some of the crumbs of fun they had before kids — Albert admits to Bruno that he jerks off in his bedroom while his kids watch  Dora The Explorer . And Vero and Patri have a lot to work out after Javier accidentally let word of Vero’s new job on Ibiza slip out. The first episode covers a lot of territory, and we’re really interested to see where all of these relationships go during the season.

Sex and Skin: Nothing but kissing in the first episode.

Parting Shot: When Bruno comes in holding a book like he said, he catches Àlex’s eye. “Don’t let it be him,” Àlex says to himself. But, as we described above, when it  is  him, Àlex says a deflated “Shit” to himself, while pasting a smile on his face.

Sleeper Star: Meritxell Calvo’s harder-edged Vero plays well off Cuevas’ more sensitive and romantic Àlex.

Most Pilot-y Line: Bruno’s last straw on Grindr was when someone matched with him just to text “Stop saying hey, you bore. I wouldn’t hook up with you even if I was on GHB.” Why ya gotta be so cruel, Gridnr match guy?

Our Call: STREAM IT. We’re a sucker for couples that struggle to make it despite all odds, especially after they meet up in an unusual way.  Smiley is definitely in that category, and all the characters are drawn well enough to make us want to follow their romantic adventures.

Joel Keller ( @joelkeller ) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com , VanityFair.com , Fast Company and elsewhere.

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When the horror histories of the 2010s are written, the decade will be associated with trauma metaphors the way the ‘80s 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 is—the movie is vague on this point—literally feeds on, and is spread by, trauma.

Specifically, the vague something that dogs Dr. Rose Cotter ( Sosie Bacon ) throughout “Smile” likes the taste of people who have witnessed someone else dying by suicide—gruesome, painful, bloody suicide, by garden shears and oncoming trains and the shattered fragments of a ceramic vase in a hospital intake room. That’s where Rose briefly meets Laura ( Caitlin Stasey ), a PhD student who’s brought to the psychiatric emergency ward where Rose works, shaking and terrified that something is out to get her. “It looks like people, but it’s not a person,” 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.

This would unsettle anyone, but it especially bothers Rose given that Rose’s own mother died by suicide many years earlier. That lingering trauma, and the fears and stigma that surround it, form the film’s most intelligent thematic thread: Rose’s fiance Trevor ( Jessie T. Usher ) admits that he’s researched inherited mental illness online, and harsh terms like “nutjobs,” “crazies,” and “head cases” are used to describe mentally ill people throughout the film. The idea that she might not actually be plagued by the same entity that killed Laura, and that her hallucinations, lost time, and emotional volatility might have an internal cause, seems to bother Rose more than the concept of being cursed. The people around Rose, including Trevor, her therapist Dr. Northcott ( Robin Weigert ), her boss Dr. Desai ( Kal Penn ), and her sister Holly (Gillian Zinzer), certainly seem to think the problem is more neurochemical than supernatural—that is, until it’s way too late. 

The only one who believes Rose is her ex, Joel ( Kyle Gallner ), a cop who’s been assigned to Laura’s case. Their tentative reunion opens the door to the film’s mystery element, which makes up much of “Smile’s” long, but not overly long, 115-minute run time. The film’s storyline follows many of your typical beats of a supernatural horror-mystery, escalating from a quick Google (the internet-age equivalent of a good old-fashioned library scene) to an in-person interview with a traumatized, incarcerated survivor of whatever this malevolent entity actually is. Brief reference is made to a cluster of similar events in Brazil, opening up the door to a sequel.

“Smile’s” greatest asset is its relentless, oppressive grimness: This is a film where children and pets are as vulnerable as adults, and the horror elements are bloody and disturbing to match the dark themes. This unsparing sensibility is enhanced by Bacon’s shaky, vulnerable performance as Rose: At one point, she screams at Trevor, “I am not crazy!,” then mumbles an apology and looks down at her shoes in shame. At another, her wan smile at her nephew’s birthday party stands as both a bleak counterpoint to the sick grin the entity’s victims see before they die (thus the film’s title), as well as a relatable moment for viewers who have reluctantly muddled their way through similar gatherings in the midst of a depressive episode. 

Sadly, despite a compelling lead and strong craft behind the camera—the color palette, in shades of lavender, pink, teal, and gray, is capably chosen and very of the moment—“Smile” is diminished by the sheer fact that it’s not as fresh a concept as it might seem. This is director Parker Finn ’s debut feature as a writer and director, based on a short film that won a jury award at SXSW 2020. To spin that into a non-franchise wide-release movie from a major studio like Paramount within two years—in a pandemic, no less!—is an impressive achievement, to be sure. 

But in padding out the concept from an 11-minute short into a nearly two-hour movie, “Smile” leans too heavily not only on formulaic mystery plotting, but also on horror themes and imagery lifted from popular hits like “ The Ring ” and “ It Follows .” David Robert Mitchell ’s 2014 film is an especially prominent, let’s say, influence on “Smile,” which, combined with its placement on the “it’s really about trauma” continuum, make this a less bracing movie experience than it might have been had it broken the mold more aggressively. It does introduce Finn as a capable horror helmer, one with a talent for an elegantly crafted jump scare and a knack for making a viewer feel uneasy and upset as they exit the theater—both advantages for a film like this one. But fans excited to see an “original” horror film hitting theaters should temper those expectations. 

This review was filed from the premiere at Fantastic Fest on September 23rd. It opens on September 30th.

Katie Rife is a freelance writer and critic based in Chicago with a speciality in genre cinema. She worked as the News Editor of  The A.V. Club  from 2014-2019, and as Senior Editor of that site from 2019-2022. She currently writes about film for outlets like  Vulture, Rolling Stone, Indiewire, Polygon , and  RogerEbert.com.

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Film credits.

Smile (2023)

Rated R for strong violent content and grisly images, and language.

115 minutes

Sosie Bacon as Dr. Rose Cotter

Kyle Gallner as Joel

Caitlin Stasey as Laura Weaver

Jessie T. Usher as Trevor

Rob Morgan as Robert Talley

Kal Penn as Dr. Morgan Desai

Robin Weigert as Dr. Madeline Northcott

• Parker Finn

Cinematographer

• Charlie Sarroff
• Elliot Greenberg
• Cristobal Tapia de Veer

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‘Smile’ Review: Grab and Grin

A young psychiatrist believes she’s being pursued by a malevolent force in this impressive horror feature debut.

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By Jeannette Catsoulis

A relentlessly somber, precision-tooled picture whose frights only reinforce the wit of its premise, “Smile” turns our most recognizable sign of pleasure into a terrifying rictus of pain.

And pain is something that Rose (Sosie Bacon), a young clinical psychiatrist, understands, having witnessed her mother’s suicide many years earlier. So when a hysterical patient (Caitlin Stasey) claims that she’s being stalked by a murderous, shape-shifting entity — and that this specter appeared only after she saw an acquaintance brutally kill himself — Rose is immediately empathetic. What happens next is so horrifying it will not only resurrect old terrors but engender new ones, destabilizing Rose and everyone close to her.

Increasingly convinced that she, too, is going to die in some horrible fashion, Rose is plagued by gruesome memories, nightmarish hallucinations and lost stretches of time. Her friends and family — including a distracted sister (Gillian Zinser), distant fiancé (Jessie T. Usher) and concerned supervisor (Kal Penn) — presume psychological damage. Only her ex-boyfriend (Kyle Gallner), a sympathetic police detective, is willing to help her research anyone who might have had a similar experience. And, crucially, survived.

In its thematic use of unprocessed trauma and, especially, its presentation of death as a kind of viral infection passed from one person to another, “Smile” embraces an immediately recognizable horror-movie setup. In the past, this has centered on cursed pieces of technology, like the videotape in “The Ring” (2002 ) and the cellphone in “One Missed Call” (2005) . Here, though, death is dealt simply by witnessing an act, and in that sense the movie’s closest cousin may be David Robert Mitchell’s immensely creepy “It Follows” (2015) . In that film, the malevolent virus was transferred through sex; here, the medium is suicide, and the bloodier the better.

Yet this first feature from the writer and director Parker Finn (expanding his 2020 short film, “Laura Hasn’t Slept”) doesn’t feel like a retread: Even the familiar luckless pet seems included more as a wink-wink to the audience than a lazy crib. The jump scares are shockingly persuasive, gaining considerable oomph from Tom Woodruff Jr.’s imaginative practical effects and Charlie Sarroff’s tipsy camera angles. An unexpected color palette sets a dolorous tone without being suffocatingly gloomy, and Bacon’s performance , both shaky and determined, ensures that the very real agony of mental illness and its stigmatization register as strongly as any supernatural pain. Like the emotional injury they represent, the smiles in “Smile” are — in one case, quite literally — bleeding wounds that can’t be stanched.

Smile Rated R for scary teeth and shocking deaths. Running time: 1 hour 55 minutes. In theaters.

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Smiley (Movie Review)

Charlie's rating: ★ director: michael j. gallagher | release date: 2012.

"Smiley" is a film that has been bouncing around the news pages of horror sites for some time now. The killer's mask is disturbing and very effective at creating a sense of dread along the lines of the greatest slasher villains. This mask is the reason it's maintained interest throughout the horror community and kept me curious enough that it remained on my radar. The realization that the mask was all the movie had going for it quickly moved my interest from prolonged curiosity, to consisten dread.

Ashley (Caitlin Gerard) is a college student moving into a new house with a wild roommate named Proxy (Melanie Papalia). Ashley has always been the responsible, conservative and uptight figure but Proxy coaxes her into going to a party. This party features a collection of friends that only know each other via online video chat sites. Zane (Andrew James Allen), the party's host, proceeds to tell the tale of Smiley to Ashley and Proxy. A modern take on Bloody Mary in which during a video chat one person must type, and I'm not kidding here, "I did it for the lolz" three times into the chat box. After that Smiley then pops out and kills the receiving chatter. The girls try it out for themselves resulting in the death of a stranger online, thus sending Ashley into a paranoid nervous breakdown convinced Smiley is real and that she has to stop him.

It's hard to take the movie seriously from its cliched and groan inducing premise. An extended version of Bloody Mary morphed onto shades of other horror films with an atrocious cast, it passes being taken seriously and steam rolls into monotonous travesty. Avoiding spoilers for the poor souls that might still want to view this film, the third act offers some twists and turns for the killer. These are not good twists. The plot's finale is visible miles away from its conclusion and the narrative is so threadbare it's constantly padded with tiresome scenes of Ashley seeking out authority figures to lament her frustration. Though the biggest disappointment ultimately is the killer, Smiley. A wonderfully realized mask concept is wasted on a killer with no bite, menace or fun. The few instances inside Ashley's head where Smiley becomes a supernatural force are legitimately interesting and perked my attention. But that's all they are, instances.

The cast is lead by Caitlin Gerard, who many may recognize from her role in "The Social Network" as the intern Justin Timberlake gets caught with doing cocaine. Gerard commits to the role and does her best to play the emotional levels needed for the role, but her performance is uneven and delivery grating. Though she's the only professional amongst the cast trying to work within the material, excluding Roger Bart and Keith David's cameos. The supporting performances and bit players are disturbingly bad stereotypes of various individuals. And their ultimate motivations are insufferable and lacking in any legitimacy.

"Smiley" had me engaged from afar for what seemed like years. The ever so often image of the film's killer always gave me hope that this might be an intriguing indie that could even have legs for a sequel. To my dismay, and I imagine the horror community in general, "Smiley" is a YouTube generation's attempt at creating horror. It lacks substance, intrigue, and its final revelations are so misguided and self aggrandizing that it kills any potential for even a cult fan base.

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Smiley: film review.

A knife wielding maniac stalks internet chat rooms in this horror thriller.

By THR Staff

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With horror films having a knack for keeping up with current technology, the malevolent videocassettes of The Ring series have now given way to the perils of the internet. But the latest example of this burgeoning sub-genre, Smiley , is unfortunately less scary than, say, the prospect of your significant other accidentally discovering your search engine history.

This low-budget updating of themes endlessly exploited in the Candyman and Scream movies features the titular knife-wielding maniac, who looks like a grossly disfigured Mr. Potato Head, popping up to kill people on random chat rooms whenever the phrase “I did it for the lulz” is typed three times. If you don’t know what that internet slang expression means, you’re not this film’s target audience.

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PHOTOS: Iconic Horror Movies

Summoning up the fiend with disturbing regularity is college freshman Ashley ( Caitlin Gerard ), so innocent that she clearly must have skipped a few grades. Having witnessed Smiley dispatch various victims on the web thanks to the prodding of her jaded roommate Proxy ( Melanie Papalia ), Ashley finds herself haunted in her nightmares, which provides director Michael Gallagher the opportunity to inject endless cheap scares into the proceedings.

Screenwriters Gallagher and Glasgow Phillips attempt to provide some philosophical weight to the otherwise generic storyline with frequent scenes in which an ethics professor (an amusingly snarky Roger Bart ) lectures on the nature of good and evil and such principles as Occam’s razor. The latter theory provides some clues to the film’s eventual trick ending, which is–as usual for this sort of formulaic exercise–followed by yet another one paving the way for the inevitable sequel.

The youthful cast members have been encouraged to overact with abandon, especially in the climactic sequence that makes Lord of the Flies seem like neo-realism. Keith David provides some gravitas in the obligatory role of a skeptical detective, which only makes one wonder why this talented actor is so frequently wasted in such sub-standard fare.  

Production: Level 10 Films

Cast: Caitlin Gerard, Melanie Papalia, Shane Dawson, Andrew James Allen, Liza Weil, Roger Bart, Keith David

Director: Michael Gallagher

Screenwriters: Michael Gallagher, Glasgow Phillips

Producers: Michael Wormser, Michael Gallagher

Executive producers: Elaine Gallagher, Michael Gallagher, Glasgow Phillips

Director of photography: Nicola Marsh

Editor: Zach Anderson

Production designer: Alec Contestabile

Costume designer: Adrienne Young

Composer: Dave Porter

Rated R, 95 min                              

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‘Smile’ Review: Parker Finn’s Supernatural Take on Trauma Will Make You Grimace and Grin

Marisa mirabal.

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The phrase “ smile through the pain” takes on a menacing new meaning in “Smile,” as Parker Finn uses an internationally recognized symbol of happiness to elicit fear and evil as part of the film’s exploration of trauma. A smile is nothing more than a mask, and the real horror arises from the true intention behind it.

Sosie Bacon stars as Rose Cotter, a doctor who works in an emergency psychiatric unit and has carried a heavy burden since she witnessed her mother’s suicide at ten years old. Her mental health begins to deteriorate after she assesses a young woman named Laura (Caitlin Stasey) who is brought in for witnessing a suicide. Frantic and begging for someone to believe her, Laura tells Rose that she is being taunted by a being that only she can see; one that smiles and changes its appearance all while delivering a death threat. She then kills herself right in front of a frozen Rose, who later discovers that whatever entity influenced this patient has now latched itself onto her.

Finn fleshes out Rose’s character with backstories and glimpses into the relationships with her boss, her mother, her fiance, and her older sister. Rose’s emotional turmoil is visually engrossing as a result of Bacon’s impressively frenetic performance. As Rose grapples with disturbing hallucinations and the inability to trust those around her, she fluctuates between moments of mania and disconnection. This spectrum of vulnerable paranoia and fear allows Finn to tackle the multilayered complexity of mental health as Rose attempts to convince those around her that what she is experiencing is real.

While this is a tiresome (although realistic) trope in horror, these rapidly changing emotional states allow Bacon’s acting to shine. Feeling alone, despite the care from her therapist (Robin Weigert), Rose finds a sliver of solace in a police officer and former flame, Joel (Kyle Gallner), who helps her piece together the unsettling lineage of this supernatural being’s victims. While the specifics of the monster are hidden, its execution method and purpose are both revealed within a storyline that is sadly traditional and insipid in its structure.

In order to convey Rose’s mental and emotional downward spiral, Finn utilizes an array of strong camera angles that suggest the lack of consistency in her newfound reality. Slowly rotating the camera ninety degrees, inverting the camera completely upside down, invasive close-up shots on the characters’ faces, and beautiful aerial shots all provide an ominous tone with the eerie feeling of being studied and hunted.

The minimalist production design, courtesy of Lester Cohen, focuses on the horrific mental state of its characters instead of painting a typical horror film aesthetic with gothic or dark features. However, there are certain color palettes that nicely symbolize the instability of Rose’s inner mind and physical surroundings. For example, the hospital where she works dons light pink walls (a nod to an old study that found the shade Bake-Miller Pink to reduce aggression) while Rose often wears blue outfits, a color often representing sadness

The plot of “Smile” is exhaustingly reminiscent of other horror predecessors such as “It Follows,” “The Ring,” “Oculus,” and even “Final Destination.” Finn elaborates on a contagious approach to death by factoring in trauma and how grief and depression can have a ripple effect, but the story does not entirely feel like its own beast. To enhance the film’s already heavily pronounced themes, composer Cristobal Tapia de Veer creates a strong soundscape of playfulness and dread which perfectly compliments the juxtaposition used throughout the film’s 116 minute running time.

The sound design and music are as unnerving as the graphic death scenes, but unfortunately come with excessive amounts of jump scares. And the special effects team from Amalgamated Dynamics constructs truly searing imagery that will both shock and delightfully disgust, especially in the third act. Their grisly prosthetic work and creative monster design have a corporeal surrealism which will have horror fans grinning from ear to ear.

“Smile” navigates unhealed trauma through a supernatural lens and mischievous juxtaposition, despite feeling like a shadow of other stories. With rare moments of dark comedy and irony, he is able to expose the forceful nature of society’s expectation to be happy and presentable despite the suffering that may lurk under one’s skin. Overall, “Smile” delivers a captivating and claustrophobic mental hellscape that will cause one to both grimace and grin.

Paramount will release “Smile” in theaters on Friday, September 30.

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‘Smile’ Review: The Demons Grin Back at You in a Horror Movie With a Highly Effective Creep Factor

A therapist looks like she's losing her mind in a shocker that puts a happy face on trauma.

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“ Smile ” is a horror film that sets up nearly everything — its highly effective creep factor, its well-executed if familiar shock tactics, its interlaced theme of trauma and suicide — before the opening credits. In an emergency psych ward, Dr. Rose Cotter ( Sosie Bacon ), a diligent and devoted therapist, is speaking to a woman who sounds like her soul went to hell and never made it back. Her name is Laura (Caitlin Stasey), and she describes, in tones that remain rational despite her tremulous panic, the visions she’s been seeing that no one else can.

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The smile, as a signifier of maniacal fear, goes back a long way. Just think of Jack-’o-lanterns and the Joker, or the leer that flashed across the mottled face of Linda Blair’s Regan MacNeil, or the rictus grins in a movie like “Insidious” or the movie that inspired it, the great 1962 low-budget freak-show classic “Carnival of Souls.” In “Smile,” the first-time writer-director Parker Finn, drawing on films like “Hereditary” and “It Follows” and “The Strangers,” turns the human smile into a spooky vector of the shadow world of evil. The movie has a shivery quality that I, for one, thought “Black Phone” lacked. Yet I wish “Smile” were more willing to be…suggestive.

If you’re haunted by visions of people smiling at you, but no one else sees them, the world is going to think you’re crazy, and much of the drama in “Smile” revolves around Rose looking like a therapist who’s lost her mind. Sosie Bacon, who’s like a taut neurasthenic Geneviève Bujold, creates an impressive spectrum of anxiety, tugging the audience into her nightmare. It makes sense that Rose, teaming up with her police-officer ex-boyfriend (Kyle Gallner), turns herself into an investigator, because that’s what therapists are (at least the good ones). And she’s got a primal trauma of her own: the suicide of her mother, which we glimpse in the film’s opening moments. “Smile” lifts, from “Hereditary,” the idea that the emotional and psychological demons that are passed down through families are our own real-life ghosts. But in this case it’s a megaplex metaphor: literal, free of nuance, illustrated (at the climax) with a demon who sheds her skin, all the better to get inside yours.

There’s a good scene set at Rose’s nephew’s seventh birthday party, where the usual tuneless singing of “Happy Birthday” melts the film into a trance, and the kid unwraps a present that stops the party dead in its tracks. But I would have liked to see three more scenes this dramatic — especially in a movie that lasts 115 minutes. “Smile” will likely be a hit, because it’s a horror film that delivers without making you feel cheated. At 90 minutes, though, with less repetition, it might have been a more ingenious movie. (And why is “Lollipop,” the 1958 hit by the Chordettes, played over the closing credits? It’s one of my favorite songs, but it has zero connection to anything in the movie.) Yet let’s give “Smile” credit for taking a deep dive into the metaphysics of smile horror. The nature of a smile is that it draws you into a connection with the person who’s smiling. That’s why the forces who come after Rose are more than just bogeywomen. That’s why it feels like they’re meant for her.

Reviewed at Regal Union Square, Sept. 26, 2022. MPA Rating: R. Running time: 115 MIN.

• Production: A Paramount Pictures release, in association with Paramount Players, of a Temple Hill Entertainment production. Producers: Marty Bowen, Wyck Godfrey, Isaac Klausner, Robert Salerno. Executive producer: Adam Fishbach.
• Crew: Director, screenplay: Parker Finn. Camera: Charlie Sarroff. Editor: Eeliott  Greenberg. Music: Cristobal “Christo” Tapia de Veer.
• With: Sosie Bacon, Jessie T. Usher, Kyle Gallner, Robert Weigert, Caitlin Stasey, Kal Penn, Rob Morgan.

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Smiley (2012) Stream and Watch Online

Watch 'smiley' online.

Fancy watching ' Smiley ' on your TV or mobile device at home? Finding a streaming service to buy, rent, download, or watch the Michael J. Gallagher-directed movie via subscription can be challenging, so we here at Moviefone want to do the heavy lifting. We've listed a number of streaming and cable services - including rental, purchase, and subscription alternatives - along with the availability of 'Smiley' on each platform when they are available. Now, before we get into the various whats and wheres of how you can watch 'Smiley' right now, here are some particulars about the Level 10 Films horror flick. Released October 12th, 2012, 'Smiley' stars Caitlin Gerard , Melanie Papalia , Shane Dawson , Andrew James Allen The R movie has a runtime of about 1 hr 35 min, and received a user score of 43 (out of 100) on TMDb, which assembled reviews from 387 experienced users. What, so now you want to know what the movie's about? Here's the plot: "After learning of an urban legend in which a demented serial killer named SMILEY can be summoned through the internet, mentally fragile Ashley must decide whether she is losing her mind or becoming Smiley's next victim." 'Smiley' is currently available to rent, purchase, or stream via subscription on VIX .

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Smile Should Smile More

Smile has such a visually powerful concept that it might take a while before you realize the movie is blowing it. After all, what’s more menacing than someone intently staring at you with a big, toothy, frozen, creepy smile? Parker Finn’s debut horror feature, which he based on his own 2020 short film, Laura Hasn’t Slept , recognizes this basic, uncanny concept. And initially, it delivers: Early on, the film is filled with plastered smiles, and Finn uses the motif in interesting ways. Then the inspiration vanishes and Smile settles into the wan, pro forma genre-flick form it so astutely evaded early on.

The premise is generic horror, but the execution, at first, is anything but. The film follows Dr. Rose Cotter (Sosie Bacon), a young doctor working for an emergency psychiatric unit, who one day meets with a highly agitated patient who has witnessed the grisly suicide of her college professor. The professor, we’re told, had an eerie smile on his face before killing himself. Then, sure enough, the patient suddenly starts to grin creepily before promptly slitting her own throat. Rose is spooked, and it’s not long before she starts seeing terrifying visions of smiles and sinister figures lurking in the dark corners of her house. (There’s some sort of buried trauma in her life involving the death of her mother, so we know that will figure into the proceedings eventually.)

The terrifying smile is, of course, not a new idea for the genre: Paul Leni’s 1928 drama The Man Who Laughs worked the motif so effectively that the film was retroactively classified as horror and wound up influencing any number of proper genre flicks. (It also inspired the Joker.) And although Leni’s picture was based on a Victor Hugo novel, this is an inherently cinematic concept. A film built around smiles — in particular a specific type of smile — has to be able to use the human face well.

Smile , for a while, does exactly that. Bacon stands out in particular. The daughter of Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick, she’s a terrific actor, but there’s a certain malleability to her visage, which director Finn embraces visually. When she’s at work, made up and put together, Rose seems cool and delicately featured. As the story proceeds, the makeup disappears, furrows appear on her brow and bags under her eyes, and Finn seems to shoot her with wider lenses and harsher light — as if to exaggerate her features. Some sort of increased agitation like this is nothing new in horror, of course, but here, the transformation is so extreme that it captures the imagination. It suggests that Rose becomes a different person when she no longer has to put on the proverbial face.

For a film called Smile , which is all about repressed memories and buried horrors, this is a fascinating stylistic idea. And on the evidence solely of the first half hour or so of this movie, Finn will surely be a director to watch. Direct close-ups, with characters basically looking straight at the camera, both add to the unsettling tone of the picture and focus our attention on the slightest movements of their faces. To put it another way, the film teaches us how to watch it. That’s a nifty accomplishment. If only the film didn’t eventually forget its own lessons.

Even a basic glance at the plot gives you some idea of where it’s all headed, although it takes an agonizingly long time before our heroine realizes that she’s being It Follows -ed by smiles — that this is a chain of viral hauntings with each carrier witnessing one ghastly suicide, then, soon enough, unwittingly committing their own. (This is only a spoiler if you happen to be a character in the movie.) Even more irritating is the fact that nobody around Rose — not the doctors, her ex-boyfriend the cop (Kyle Gallner), her seemingly helpful fiancé (Jessie T. Usher), nor her busybody sister (Gillian Zinser) — seems capable of putting two and two together despite the fact that all these suicides appear to be happening in a fairly small community and are well documented. Everybody is so conveniently lunkheaded. Meanwhile, as Rose gradually loses her grip on reality, the film devolves into a series of dream visions, each of which serves to make what’s happening onscreen less and less interesting. (Every time something suspenseful or scary was interrupted to show Rose waking up in her car or whatever, a little piece of me died.)

These are, perhaps, minor narrative gripes. Horror is the one genre in which the audience is allowed to be one step ahead of the characters and things are allowed to not always make sense. But in Smile , it often feels like we’re one whole act ahead of everybody, and that can lead to tedium. More important, the real disappointment comes in the way that the film discards its visual principles and its most exciting conceit: Smile all but abandons the whole smile thing. That feels downright unforgivable.

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Smiley: Season 1 Reviews

While I wish the central two characters offered more of an interesting dynamic with each other, the rest of Smiley’s cast and conflicts make the show a well-rounded and pleasant watch.

Full Review | Original Score: 7.5/10 | Jan 14, 2023

With an entertaining supporting cast of characters, Smiley performs exactly what its title foretells: It puts a smile on your face.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Dec 13, 2022

Not another love fiction, Smiley lays out a story that goes beyond that. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 8/10 | Dec 12, 2022

Aside from a few clichés, the series is entertaining, particularly the comings and goings between Álex's and Bruno's worlds... [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Dec 12, 2022

... Even at its lowest, Smiley has enough of a hook to at the very least keep you entertained. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Dec 9, 2022

Guillem Clua has done a good job of setting up the side characters with their own solid B-stories.

Full Review | Dec 9, 2022

Hour 3: College antisemitism, more bad news from Boeing, guest Tiffany Smiley

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