#The Babadook has a VERY similar structure and vibe as Smile except the ending is a lot nicer.

[giantkillerjack]

Update: Having finished Smile (2022) with only minimal fast-forwarding (I'll go back and re-watch it fully at a much later date), I can confirm 3 things:

I am an absolute fucking pineapple for starting a horror movie past 10pm. The previous personal rule I had was "no starting horror media after midnight", and I started this movie at 11:54pm. I see now that my previous rule was... insufficient. My adrenaline isn't going to go down enough to sleep until at least 5:00am. I am a kumquat of a man. I am a silly little transgender kiwi-lime spritz. I am a passionfruit-strawberry smoothie with boba for brains, and I have made an error.

Most people who are suicidal should not watch this movie. Just-- go watch The Babadook for now if you absolutely must watch a movie about a literal trauma monster, and come back to this one when it has less of a chance of causing harm to you. Both are great movies. Smile is just a lot more bleak. - And that is in comparison to a movie where a woman snaps her a small dog's neck in front of her 6-year-old child. I mean, The Babadook is absolutely hopeful in comparison.

This movie fucking slaps. It is extremely fucking good. If you are in a place to watch a bleak and TERRIFYING movie about suicide, this is an excellent fucking movie. (If you're not sure, please save it for later! It's not going anywhere!)

I mean, I want everyone in my life who failed to support me in my own time being suicidal to have to watch this movie because it is a brutal look at what it is like to have a deadly mental illness that you don't have the language to explain and that you just can't get people to understand the danger of. Gods know those folks who failed me would probably STILL fail to understand what I'm showing them, but MAN, it is a BRUTAL message about not believing mentally ill people.

My only real complaint tbh is that the character of the white cop ex-boyfriend was WAY too helpful and understanding to the mentally tormented main character. Which ultimately means that the film did fail to understand and highlight the way that the cops play a direct role in perpetuating the very same abuse and neglect of the mentally ill in America that this movie is about!

(The fact that the main character's therapist mentions that she is legally obligated to call the cops if she determines her patient is dangerous shows that the movie is at least partially aware of this issue, but it fails to commit in this respect.)

But otherwise, yeah, this is an amazing fucking movie and the most visceral demonstration of the horrors of psychosis and untreated PTSD that I've seen, while actively challenging the ableist horror movie tropes I've come to expect from any horror movie that shows ANYTHING related to mental health.

This movie really said, "NO, you're not gonna get murdered by a bunch of crazed lunatics. That's fucking stupid. You're MUCH more at risk to BECOME someone other people CALL a lunatic for reasons outside of your control... and then there will be nobody that can help you."

And THAT'S the horror story I think neurotypical people need to fucking hear. The same way I don't need another "oh man wouldn't it be scary if you met some POOR PEOPLE with FACIAL DEFORMITIES" cannibal hillbilly movie, when the REAL horror of THAT situation is the kind of treatment a poor person with an unusual face could expect from a group of lost college kids who represent wealthy society at large.

I give Smile a 9/10, with the caveat that, again, this story is a tragedy about mental health. And it's an important story to tell...

But as a person whose life was saved by the patients and counselors at a mental hospital's intensive outpatient program, I want to emphasize that this movie would have fucked me up really badly back then, and it could have even discouraged me from seeking the trauma treatment that helped my life stop being a living hell.

So I wanted to emphasize one more time to please be careful with this film if you're currently having a Bad Time, and also emphasize that not all of our stories end in tragedy. I'm alive and loved and often happy, and I don't want to die, and I once thought that was an impossible state of being for me.

Even though it was fucking chilling for me to recognize that twisted titular smile from this movie as the one I used to draw on my artistic representation of my own suicidality (her name used to be Sue), if i were to draw my trauma monster now, it would look like a small strange little creature that needs love and patience (they don't wanna hurt me; they're just... horribly scared sometimes. But they haven't been Sue in a long time). Things are so different now.

So. Good things are possible. And while sometimes good movies benefit from NOT showing hopeful endings in order to emphasize the real-life stakes of a societal problem, YOU, reading this, are not yet lost.

The possibility of a better life - however slim or grim - cannot truly die so long as you draw breath.

And I happen to personally know a lot of people working to help make that chance bigger and better because doing so is MY life's work, and this has led to me making a lot of awesome, radical, kind friends. We are Many.

And that matters. You matter. And even if you, now, are the only person who ever reads this - if you can be even a hair's breadth gentler to yourself today in any way, then, by my metric, I have written a wildly successful movie review.

(Especially considering that I am, at my core, a sapient mango who now has to watch funny YouTube videos until 5-fucking-AM because I am JUST A SILLY LITTLE GUY OKAY.)

The cool thing about a horror movie that takes place in a mental hospital and, shockingly, actually turns out to be on the side of mentally ill people is that it avoids all the common disgusting pitfalls of mocking, demonizing, and infantilizing mentally ill people.

The downside is

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!

[It's much scarier.]