Dolby Smile Review

So we headed to the mall to see Smile....

Lynn bought tickets for Dolby in advance. When we picked up our ducats, we asked the concessionaire if he had seen the movie yet. He confessed that he hadn't but he planned on seeing it soon. He asked us, with a smile, to stop back after our viewing and give him a quick thumbs up or thumbs down.

Dolby is a projection system between IMax and regulation. The screen is smaller than IMAx but supersized compared to reg. The sound is rock concert volume with extra clarity. The comfy lounge style seats recline. They shake rattle and roll according to the decibels of the sound and the scares on the screen. Dolby is a trip in itself.

Trailers in Dolby are particularly mind blowing as the previews choose scenes that are extra loud, extra green screened and extra chair rattling. One of the trailers was for the next and hopefully final epsiode of the Halloween franchise with good old reliable Jamie Leigh Curtis. We groaned our way through the idiotic sound and fury pounded upon the screen. Jeezuz Christ, let's hope this is the last gasp of the Halloween franchise.

Then I started thinking back to the beginning when the first Halloween lunged at us. I remember how taken by surprise everyone was with the movie. I remember a similar surprise with the first Alien movie and the first Terminator movie. All three were more on target than anyone expected. They went on to spawn sequels that spwned franchises. None of the sequels were as "good" as the originals until as I had just experienced, the announcement of another Halloween made me groan with outrage at the flagrant capitalistic milking of a once authentic horror film.

I wondered if Smile would be the next unanticpated film to surprise audiences and critics alike with its authenticity.

Smile is engaging from the get go and moves from engaging to gripping almost immediately at the drop of the first nightmare. I fell for our heroine Rose played by Sosie Bacon. Rose radiates wide eyes empathy, intelligence,maturity and professionalism. She reminds me of my daughters. Whatever else Sosie Bacon does in her career she will always be Rose to me.

The setting is a hospital for the profoundly disturbed, what we used to call in less sensitive days a psycho nut house. To work in such an environment must demand a firm grip on sanity.

Herein lies the essencial condition of this supernatural, psychological horror film. To paraphrase Kipling; 'If you can keep your sanity when people all around including your mother are losing their sanity and blaming it on you, then you are a woman my daughter. Over the course of the movie that battle for the retention of reason and preservation of sanity in the presence of profound demonic attack adds suspense and drama to every gesture made by every person in every frame of the film.

Demons bother me. They are contagious. They're not kidding around. They or it have/has purpose; a pitiless, discompassionate apetite aimed at the destruction of faith and hope before bludgeoning physical being. The more innocent, intelligent and lovable the victim the better suited for the merciless hammering.

Smile is all about that.

The movie remains clear and clinical until the jump scares, volume increases, hallucinations and nightmares make the movie bit bumpy in terms of who's where when they're seeing what and what is it they're seeing wherever they are and whoever/whomever they really are etc.

It begins to feel like manipulation.

At least it did to me.

Lynn felt otherwise. She's more attuned to the modern Insidious Conjuring than am I. She's better at figuring out hallucinations and dreams ( Which is which) where they are leading and how they fit into the development of the story projected.

I'm gonna leave it at that as I don't want to reveal the horrifying twists that collide at the conclusion.

When we left the theater we gave the concessionaire a double thumbs up. Once again he smiled. His smie looked a little different on the way out of the theater than it did on the way into the Dolby system.

Walking to the car in the bright sunlight, we began our discussion of the movie. I told Lynn that I thought the film lost momentum and focus towards the end . It became jumpy and could have been cut by 20 minutes. She disagreed. Every move made sense and was needed to give the film the deeply unsettling conclusion that it reached.

Today, I have come to agree with Lynn. The movie is disturbing in its depth and the deeper you go the more disturbing it gets. The disturbance is contagious. It's not kidding around.

Yeah, Smile is one of those under the radar films that almost certainly will produce a sequel and maybe even a franchise on its way to becoming a 21rst century cultural touchstone.

More Smiles are on the horizon

None of them will surpass the original.