Smile is a conversation about overcoming trauma.
How does a horror film present a deeply scary topic? In a deeply scary way.
It’s been a few days I’ve watched this film a second time and now that I’ve had time to digest, I think it’s time to…well, digest.
A horror film must build suspense while putting us into a world of confusion, fear, and while keeping us interested. Smile does this pretty well. I am not saying its the best movie of the year but it was pretty good. We know something is wrong in the film when rose sees a new patience completely lose her cool and kill herself in front of her. Now were sitting therewith over priced popcorn on our lap, and large soda (pop) big enough to put our hopes and dreams in wondering, WTF is next!?
Once we’re in, the story develops fairly quickly and we find out the protagonist has been 1) imagining everything, 2) haunted by a demon, 3) in some weird experiment. 4) running from a killer, 5) you get the point. At the end of a horror film we don’t always get the answer we want, even if we get an answer at all.
Before I move into spoilers…
[SPOILERS AHEAD!]
You should go watch this movie and ….
[SPOILERS AHEAD]
…once you find that Rose (Sosie Bacon) has spent many years not coping with the death of her mother, through long hours at work, while taking care of patients struggling with mental health issues, it’s clear this spirit following everyone is one of trauma. Once someone kills themselves in front of another person it creates a chain of events driven by trauma to which the only solution is to kill someone else and kill oneself.
WHAT!?
Yup, that’s it. And it’s an interesting conversation about what to do with trauma. We we try to reach out for help and others do not believe us, it becomes harder to deal with it. Unfortunately this trauma creates a world where we feel alone and when someone attempts to reach out, we start to believe they are part of the illusion and things are alright, when indeed they are not.
With this in mind I learned two things.
If you are going through trauma and reach out, you’re not alone. Others are going through it also. Maybe for different reasons, but still trauma. To cope with this we must seek help so we don’t enter a world of self harm and nihilism driven by the same loneliness created by the trauma.
If someone reaches out for help…help them. You may not be going through the trauma at the moment, but time will tell just how engrained trauma might be within us. In the movie we see Rose trying to get someone that will listen. One character let’s this trauma manifest in the murder of someone else instead of themselves. I think this symbolizes the inward and outward manifestation of our childhood trauma.
Speak out! Seek help! And smile a little, because you’re not the only one and we all need each other.