Smile director Parker Finn reveals the key to crafting the perfect horror movie grin. Smile stars Sosie Bacon as Rose Cotter, a doctor who begins to experience frightening occurrences after undergoing a traumatic experience with a patient. Rose must confront these experiences in order to escape this horrifying reality. Prior to Smile, Finn directed two short films, but this is the director’s first feature. Smile also stars Jessie T. Usher, Caitlin Stasey, Kyle Gallner, Judy Reyes, and Kal Penn.
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Even before its release, Smile made a distinct impression. Its trailers were memorable, especially for one eerie factor: the sinister, deranged grin shown by the main character. Smile’s titular characteristic was one of the most advertised aspects of the film. The poster features a smile in the same shape as that shown by the actors, and as part of its marketing campaign, some Smile actors also showed up to baseball games, smiling creepily for the camera while seated behind home plate.
Now, Finn breaks down what went into crafting those perfectly creepy smiles in a recent interview with NYT. According to the director, he had the actors play around with their smiles, attempting to craft the scariest look. In an exercise that Finn is sure “looked ridiculous,” actors stood facing each other, shifting their smiles into different shapes and intensifying their gazes until the other actors and Finn himself were satisfied. He says that the absolute key to these creepy smiles in Smile was in the eyes:
I’m sure we looked ridiculous. […] [The key to the smile is] a dead gaze that’s a total mismatch to the smile; a human face that pushes you into the uncanny.
Smile's Creepy Grin Is Its Defining Factor
Finn certainly achieved the “uncanny” look that he was going for. Plot aside, Smile’s smiles are the most bone-chilling and memorable aspect of the horror movie, and the trailers were enough proof that the usually friendly expression could be twisted to fit the genre. Not only are the grins memorable, but Smile is overall an impressive feature film debut from Finn, which according to Rotten Tomatoes has garnered positive reviews from both critics and audiences.
Smile is kicking off October with a strong start, as the month gears up for more spooky releases like Halloween Ends. The film has seen some success already, as Smile's opening weekend box office already surpassed its budget. Smile is not without its faults, however. While it attempts to explore Rose’s trauma, it fumbles a bit in terms of how deep it is able to dive into that. Nonetheless, Smile delivers an original storyline with a telltale memorable motif in the smile itself.