Nothing Original - relies on the same old horror cliches It's definitely an ok movie if you find yourself with your partner on a Friday night and want a bit of a spook but don't hope for too much. Spoilers in here so consider before reading further.
The premise is simple enough, it's a chain of 'suicides' in which some evil entity haunts a person to near total insanity, then possesses them at the end and causes them to commit suicide in front of another person, a witness, thereby traumatising the witness and creating some type of link through the trauma that allows the entity to attach to the witness and repeat the haunting with them culminating in the same result over and over and over.
So, what are the issues:
1. Nothing new is introduced here - nothing ground break or original - it doesn't matter whether it's the exorcist, Michael Myers, Jason, Freddie, Byebye man, slender man, or whatever, there's always some inexplicable evil force that has no explained origin or motive that simply hunts and haunts. This is more of the same only this time in the end you see something that looks like a super tall skinny/lanky American Indian type thing with bad teeth.
2. The premise - a chain of suicides - does a reasonable job of presenting tension, since you learn quickly that each time it happens the witness survives 4-7 days, and the haunting gets worse. However, much of what happened was predictable, everything from the fate of the cat - which I guessed quickly, to the therapist etc. You could kind of work out the rhythm of the haunting. It's not bad, but again, it's not original or amazing.
3. The big issue - nobody ever seems capable of explaining what is going on in these types of movies - despite the fact that she has collected evidence, has a therapist, works with therapists, she can't seem to clearly articulate what is happening and that there is a train of evidence that points to some pretty unusual coincidences that might be worth some consideration by these people, if only as part of learning about her situation so as to offer counselling. Yep, this is one of those movies where the dumbness of the protagonist is what drives the possibility of the horror. She can't seem to make sane explanations to anyone and decides to manage most of it alone.
4. The ending was hugely predictable - you realise quite quickly that, if you are going to commit suicide in 4-7 days in front of a single witness then the best hopeful way of postponing or preventing that is going somewhere so remote that there is no one around to see you. Let's at least explore what might happen then, you ask yourself. But no. It was obvious when we saw the cop ex phone her as she headed to the old cabin that the GPS in her phone would send him to her and the chain cycles again. I was literally eye rolling at this point.
Rather than consider new ground, 'what happens if she does successfully lock herself away', instead, the writers go for the super easy option so that they can come out with Smile 2 next year. I'm just waiting to see if they try to launch this evil entity by giving it a cool name and making it sound ominous. It wasn't ominious, I wasn't afraid, personally I felt like if it was after me I'd be very capable of rationally explaining what was happening to my friends, family, and medical professionals, asking them to consider that I'm ill and challenging them to test it by observing me in a lab or some such in a group on camera whilst restrained for days on end to see what happens. Aside from that, the evil entity wasn't scary, it's simply trying to possess the person, so I'd equally be inclined to tell it to F off. I just didn't feel intimidated, I'd be more concerned about being cornered by 5 drunk homeless people on a Friday at 3 am.
Anyhow, as I said at the opening, if you want some horror candy to watch, this does the job. It's vanilla flavour with no hidden inner delight, but it will get you by.