A skin-prickling, unnerving viewing experience, Parker Finn’s first feature is an astonishing demonstration of film-making restraint.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Sep 18, 2024

...Smile is a remarkably well-scripted and played psychological thriller that only lapses into horror cliché in the last ten minutes…

| Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 11, 2024

Finn wrote a simple and derivative script and directed the hell out it with Smile.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Jul 25, 2024

Despite some of its missteps, the horror film’s theme of inheriting mental illness and walking down a path that you have lived dreading all your life is poignant.

| Jun 11, 2024

It's not the most original film of recent years... [but] it uses a familiar box of tricks rather well.

| Jan 3, 2024

If the sight of a person grinning like an idiot is enough to unnerve you, then you might well be the target audience for Smile -- me, I’ll stick with Jack Nicholson’s Joker for my maniacal grimaces.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Oct 28, 2023

“Smile” works on its own terms immersed with Cotter, wound too tight and with people closest to her turning superficial and nonreciprocating; the care and support she shows them and others is unavailable to her.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Aug 16, 2023

Smile got right under my skin in a way I didn’t expect… anxiety inducing moments, & an a completely unhinged performance from Sosie Bacon! This movie really will make you afraid of smiles

| Jul 25, 2023

Smile is nothing revolutionary, but it is creepy, and sometimes that’s enough. It’s more memorable than any recent iteration of Paranormal Activity and will certainly be a hit at sleepovers.

| Jul 24, 2023

There were some aspects that were interesting but a lot of moments made me roll my eyes. The last twenty minutes got my attention but it was too little, too late at that point.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Apr 30, 2023

I did not have fun watching this. Relying too much on jump scares and not enough pay-off.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Apr 30, 2023

Don’t look away. Just keep smiling through it.

| Apr 25, 2023

Smile shows itself as a strange mixture of goldsmithing and cheap jewelry: the more unconscious it is of its own message and the further it is from giving its monsters a total shape (physical or metaphorical), the closer it is to saying something real.

| Original Score: 6/10 | Apr 25, 2023

... Its formal technique transforms a film full of clichés into an average story that manages to make an impact at the right moments. [Full review in Spanish]

| Original Score: 6/10 | Mar 20, 2023

Even with the similarities to other films in mind, Smile proves itself to be its own beast of a horror.

| Jan 28, 2023

Finn uses the strength of his conceit to turn the screws, raising tension through the Ring-like timeline Rose faces and the sheer relentlessness of her supernatural tormentor.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Dec 19, 2022

Building a horror film that feels both familiar and invigorating at the same time, Finn’s Smile delivers enough chills to satisfy.

| Dec 15, 2022

I watched the entire movie through my fingers. Starring Sosie Bacon her constant panic is operatic. She was terrifying in her out-of-control hysteria.

| Dec 5, 2022

Smile is an intense horror film dealing with survivor’s guilt that exceeds all expectations. By the film’s end, I found my palms sweating — something I’d never experienced.

| Original Score: 8/10 | Nov 30, 2022

A bone-rattling, brain-flipping chiller sure to be ranked highly by true fans of the genre.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Nov 30, 2022