Smile

“Once you see it it, it’s too late,” is Smile’s tagline, but it’s not too late to sing the virtues of a film which, while offering plot beats similar to other IPs, has deservedly drummed up a lot of business.

“Transmission” horror, moves something evil or nefarious from host to host. It’s a trope common to literally thousands of zombie and outbreak films. However, on rare occasions, a film will tweak this conceit in unique or clever ways – think the linguistic virus in Pontypool, the Overlook Hotel, transferring its bad mojo to the caretaker family in The Shining or the sex bug in It Follows, to which which Smile is occasionally and probably unfairly, compared.

Smile, meanwhile, has a different sort of vector – an entity which attacks victims who have been first-hand witnesses to trauma.

It’s a neat idea and Smiles blows out of the gate with an opener which is as harrowing as Midsommar’s gut-wrenching murder-suicide.

Rose Cotter (Sosie Bacon, daughter of Kevin and Kyra Sedgwick) is a clinical therapist whose patient, Laura, a PhD candidate, has witnessed her prof off himself. Laura ends up dead herself, in turn traumatizing Rose, whose employer promptly puts her on stress leave.

Being unable to break a cycle of trauma underpins Smile, and is a powerful metaphor in addition to plot device. And it mostly works, fueled by undeniably creepy visuals, great performances and stark settings and set pieces.

Where Smile falls short is ironically, its length. This is 30-minutes too long. Also, Smile has a tendency to wallow in darkness and misery. What makes something like A Nightmare on Elm Street so powerful, is the contrast between dark and light (literally, in fact) depicting the the everyday joys of teenage life before Freddy sinks his fingers in, in dreams.

Also, as Rose’s mental state deteriorates, she’s provided little comfort by a thinly-written fiancé. The film also tries to “Se7en” viewers with…well, you know.

***3/4 (out of 5)

The Invite

Ever have a guest overstay their welcome?

Well, you too can experience this at about the 45 minute mark: RSVP a polite “no” to The Invite and don’t be swayed by the honey dip donut critical glaze-affair on Rotten Tomatoes.

San Fran status-f-ers Joe (Seth Rogen) and Angela (Olivia Wilde) throw an impromptu party for their upstairs neighbours, whose adventures in the boudoir could violate city noise ordinances. It’s a subject ornery Joe would like to bring up, as it’s kept him up. And up it comes.

Hawk (Edward Norton) and Piña (Penelope Cruz) are the folks upstairs whose swinging would not be out of place in Cirque du Soleil. They are suave and sophisticated (because they speak Spanish) and wouldn’t you know it – a proposal, decent or indecent depending on your POV – comes up in the form of a couples’ swap.

The Invite is about group sex but only features a group. It’s like a Fast and the Furious that isn’t fast.

The ability to have, or in this case, circumnavigate uncomfortable subject matter forms the crux of The Invite and a whole bunch of flicks, themes which are surprisingly better-explored even in some horror films (Speak No Evil aka The Guest comes to mind, a film which expertly tackles Northern European reticence). The Invite, meanwhile, mistakes awkwardness for conflict – a sort of Edward Al-bee-list stakes-free Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? with which it’s oft and unfairly compared.

Not every film necessarily needs conflict, but it’d certainly elevate 90 minutes-plus of quarrelling over what is at the end of the day, a pretty trifling, for lack of a better term, “affair.”

Here’s a suggestion: make use of the occasionally-referenced and never-seen Maggie, Joe and Angela’s daughter. Here’s a better film: the sullen teen comes home with a friend, high of course (if only to maybe match her papa Rogen’s baked, seal honking laugh as a nature over nurture riff). She overhears or otherwise witnesses the foursome proposal, realizes it’s not about hitting the fairways and wigs out on them. After all, if social trends are to be believed, Gen Z is a lot more prudish than its forebears.

Maybe have Hawk and Piña invite Joe and Angela back to their place: and dot it with red flags (make it Maga-coded, or better still, a dirty, hoarder’s dream to counter the Architectural Digest vibe of the first pad). And see if Joe and Angela can fight their way back home, Warriors or Anabasis-style.

Either way, The Invite should’ve concluded with fireworks…a fist fight, betrayal, a death, cops, something, anything, sex?

Director Olivia Wilde gives us European arthouse shots – often a distant Joe because, get it, the others are distancing themselves from him! Too bad other racier Euro elements aren’t brought to bear.

What keeps this even remotely compelling is Rogen, an acquired taste who is actually dynamite here. Cruz does what she can with a police sketch-outline of a character – a therapist who sleeps with her patients whose behaviour is never interrogated. Norton oozes smooth and confident as an ex-firefighter. Wilde’s millennial wine-drunk mom is awkward and twitchy. And pretty bad. And here at least, Wilde has the sex appeal of instant oatmeal.

The dialogue occasionally bubbles but never hits a rolling boil.

I credit the excellent discussion Carmen and Christina have over at The Best Movie Substack for this observation: The Invite lets us down right off the bat with a shitty epigraph, something vaguely about marriage because King of the Epigrams Oscar Wilde said it: “One should always be in love. That is the reason one should never marry.”

Could’ve picked this instead from The Picture of Dorian Gray: “the one charm of marriage is that it makes a life of deception absolutely necessary for both parties.”

Also, probably because she is in dialogue-heavy relationship-centric films, Diane Keaton has a shoe-horned in coda tribute. The poster’s serif font conjures up prime Woody too.

However, don’t “invite” comparisons to better films.

*** (out of 5)