I attempted to put myself in the position of horror audiences since they have become so sophisticated.
The core character of hospital therapist Rose (Sosie Bacon), who is victim to a supernatural occurrence, spends the most of the film fighting to understand, oppose, and survive what is happening to her. In this regard, Parker Finn’s feature debut, Smile, is a traditional horror film.
However, Smile adopts an unorthodox strategy in the conclusion, with Finn’s script taking turns meant to shock horror aficionados who believe they can predict the twists. Following the film’s world premiere at Austin’s Fantastic Fest, Polygon sat down with Finn to ask him to walk through the movie’s ending, including the practical considerations that went into it, how to interpret what we see on screen, and why he omitted one detail that seemed particularly important.
Ending Smile spoilers are forthcoming.
THE END OF THE MOVIE SMILE
When a distressed young woman named Laura Weaver (Caitlin Stasey) is brought to Rose’s hospital in a condition of near-hysteria, Rose first learns about the smiling monster that takes over her life. Laura reveals that she has been seeing a “entity” that no one else can see—a monstrous creature with an evil smile that occasionally poses as people she knows, either alive or dead. When Laura collapses and screams, Rose cannot see what is happening over her shoulder. Laura calmly stands up, grinning, and cuts her own throat while Rose cries out for assistance.
Rose has continued to notice Laura grinning at her ever since, both in public and privately. She experiences vivid dreams and pictures of familiar faces yelling and grinning at her. Rose tells her sister Holly (Gillian Zinser) and fiancé Trevor (Jessie T. Usher) about the creature, but they think she is experiencing hallucinations brought on by the strain and trauma of Laura’s passing. Later, Rose and her ex-boyfriend Joel (Kyle Gallner), a police officer, find a string of horrific suicides that date back in time. The pattern shows that the entity pushes a person to commit suicide in front of a witness after haunting them until they are severely traumatised. The witness is then traumatised by the death. Then the creature picks a new victim and begins again.
By horrifyingly murdering someone else in front of a witness and passing the entity on to that witness, Rose and Joel are able to track out the one person who broke the chain and lived. That sets up the following likely outcomes for the conclusion: Rose has three options: she can succeed in breaking the curse and the entity can win, meaning Rose will die in front of someone else who absorbs the trauma; or she can find another way to confront and fight the creature, like Naomi Watts’ character Rachel does in The Ring with a similar passed-on curse.
Smile contains all three of those conclusions in the end. In front of her yelling employer, Morgan, Rose murders a terrified patient at her hospital with a savage stabbing (Kal Penn). She passes out in her car in front of the hospital and discovers that it was only a dream, so she runs from the hospital and Morgan in terror.
Then she makes her way to her childhood house, which is now abandoned and in disrepair, where her addict mother overdosed and passed away. Rose may have been able to save her mother’s life if she had phoned an ambulance as her mother pleaded with her to do rather than running away in terror. She was initially drawn to the smiling creature by the initial buried trauma and remorse over her mother’s passing. The creature appears to Rose initially as her mother and then as a huge, spindly being. However, she sets the creature and the home on fire as a metaphor of her willingness to finally let go of the past and expresses forgiveness for herself for not helping her mother when she was ten years old.
Joel, however, reveals himself as the entity once more when she goes back to him to apologise for pushing him away while they were dating and to acknowledge that she was terrified of him because he was breaking down her psychological defences. Rose understands that the encounter she had with the entity was just one of the thing’s hallucinations and that she is still at her childhood home and never actually left. When Joel appears, Rose flees because she knows the creature would use him to see her forced suicide and turn him into its next victim.
The towering, spindly creature within the home rips off its face, revealing something raw and gleaming with a succession of toothy grins running down its face. Rose’s mouth is forced open, and the creature climbs inside her. When Joel enters the house, he only notices Rose dousing herself in kerosene before turning to smile at him. The chain is completed when she self-incinerates and passes away, making Joel the creature’s next victim.
WHAT DOES SMILE’S END MEAN?
Smile shows that there are a variety of ways to deal with trauma, including passing it on (as abuse sufferers frequently do by assaulting others), accepting it, or giving in to its pressure. However, Finn claims that the purpose of the nested sequence of fake-out endings was to outsmart a potential audience that was attempting to outsmart the movie.
I wanted to put myself in their position because horror fans have become so sophisticated, he explains. “What would I anticipate? What would I be looking forward to? And I made an effort to undermine that by doing something that would catch them off guard and turn them around.
Finn had to make sure he justified that choice early on by establishing that the creature was capable of inducing elaborate hallucinations in its victims, and that it specifically used those visions to control their behaviour and heighten their fear. At the same time, the “It was all a dream” ending is a notorious fake-out in movies.
The entire film teaches you how to observe it and that you shouldn’t believe Rose’s perception, Finn claims. “The movie is designed to slightly confuse the audience. Therefore, I wanted the movie’s ending—which may or may not actually be an ending—to truly pay off that point. I leaned forward. I figured very early on that I was always interested in seeing the plot through to its most absurd logical conclusion. However, I also desired to experience a catharsis. I wanted to be able to have my cake and drink it too. I hope [the ending] fulfils that.”
According to Finn, he anticipates audiences dissecting the film and speculating about what is and isn’t true. But he adds, “I also really appreciate the idea that it doesn’t matter if anything is genuine or not if it’s happening in your head. That person’s experience “is real for them.”
WHAT HAPPENED TO THE FATHER OF ROSE?
Rose’s family is shown in several joyful family photographs in the opening scene of the movie, including her mother, father, and sister Holly. Rose’s father then vanishes from the images. It’s unclear if he abandoned the family or passed away. It’s feasible for viewers to speculate that whatever happened to him caused Rose’s mother’s decline and sent her down the path of depression and addiction, but it’s also plausible that he ran away because he couldn’t handle what was happening to her and how her mental health was failing. According to Finn, leaving it as an open question was crucial to him.
“I envisioned Smile as essentially a mother-daughter tale. The notion that [Rose] is alone with her mother and is isolated has a lot of resonance. Although it’s purposefully unclear, I enjoy that there is just the slightest clue that there once certainly was a father.
According to Finn, providing too many specifics about what happened to Rose’s father would have influenced viewers’ reactions or expectations in ways that he didn’t intend to do. He explains, “I didn’t want it to have undue impact.” To me, the most significant aspect of the absence was that it enhanced the mother-daughter bond and spoke volumes.
LINKS BETWEEN A SHORT AND A SMILE THAT INSPIRED IT
Laura Hasn’t Slept, a prior short film by Finn based in the same universe, was slated to make its debut at SXSW in 2020. Due to the outbreak of COVID-19 that year, the festival was among the first to be cancelled, but because to the success of the short, Finn was still able to strike a contract with Paramount to produce Smile.
Laura Hasn’t Slept does not tell the same tale as Smile, in contrast to some short films that turn into features. Finn says, “I prefer to think of them as kind of spiritual siblings.” “The feature contains small Easter eggs here and there as well as DNA from the short film. The titular Laura in Laura Hasn’t Slept is also played by Caitlin Stasey, who portrays Laura Weaver in Smile.
“While there is a parallel between the two roles, the two roles take very distinct paths. I find it to be a lot of fun. People who originally saw the film might be interested in going back and viewing the short. They might understand how the film might essentially be the short’s sequel.
Now unavailable for purchase or streaming, Laura Hasn’t Slept is not currently accessible to audiences, but Finn anticipates that will soon change.
He claims, “Paramount’s got it.” It’s soon going to return to the globe. They’ll likely make an effort to ensure that it is widely publicised and easily accessible.
SMILE 2: WILL IT BE RELEASED?
At least not one that he likes to acknowledge to, Finn does not have a plan for a sequel right away. I truly wanted the movie to exist for its own sake, the director claims. “I wished to share the narrative of this character. What was truly essential to me was that. I consider the world of Smile to be really entertaining. However, I never want to repeat what I’ve already done as a filmmaker. Therefore, if more Smile ever came out, I would want to be sure it was something unexpected and unrelated to what Smile is.
He’s instead working on other horror-related projects right now. He states, “I’m working on a number of different things, but nothing I’m talking about yet. But horror has always been my first love. Additionally, I want to create character-driven genre movies that explore the human condition and the frightening aspects of being a human. That is what I truly enjoy. And if I can take that and give it a twist by adding a unique genre element, that’s the direction I want to go.
