Smile, The Exorcist, and how far to push realism in horror

Smile The Exorcist
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As Smile 2 emerges in cinemas, we explore the 2022 original, its parallels with The Exorcist, and the impact of realism in horror.


How wide do you open the door? It’s a question that, whether they consciously think about it or not, all horror storytellers have to deal with at some point. 

Most writers and filmmakers are content to crack open the door just a little, letting enough of our everyday, unpleasant reality in to unsettle us without making us too uncomfortable. Movies like Halloween and Scream deal with death and blood, but they have all the lasting impact of rollercoaster rides ā€“ they thrill the senses, they make us jump and cringe, but they don’t leave us disturbed for hours afterwards.

What happens when a filmmaker opens the door further than most? Take a look at the reaction to The Exorcist when it first appeared in cinemas in 1973. News reports spoke of people fainting or staggering out of cinemas and throwing up; the film’s impact was such that, for years, the BBFC ensured that it was impossible to buy it on VHS in the UK (the ban lasted from 1984 to 1999). Director William Friedkin’s film, the board decided, was simply too disturbing to risk falling into the hands of children.

What was it that caused such a reaction? There are moments of violence in The Exorcist, but it’s far from the most intense or gory film of the 1970s. Its scenes of possession were graphic for the time it was made, but they’re comparatively brief. 

The Exorcist’s power ā€“ which it still has to this day ā€“ lies in Friedkin’s commitment to realism. The filmmaker, whose background was in documentaries, does everything he can to sell the idea that its supernatural events are happening to a regular little girl in a real house in contemporary America. It’s no accident that one of The Exorcist’s most wince-inducing scenes doesn’t have anything to do with a demon ā€“ it’s of Linda Blair’s Regan undergoing an angiogram, the procedure causing a jet of blood to emanate from her neck. 

The Exorcist
The Exorcist (1973). Friedkinā€™s naturalism elsewhere are mixed with phantasmagorical shots like this. Credit: Warner Bros.

That scene was criticised in some quarters for being needlessly graphic, but it’s arguably this discomforting realism that makes The Exorcist work: by the time Regan’s floating above her head or barfing up pea soup, we accept that what we’re seeing is true. By cracking open the door to reality just a few inches further ā€“ by showing what possession might look like if things like demons or the Devil actually existed in our everyday world ā€“ Friedkin created one of the most effective horror films of the 1970s. As one cinema-goer told cameras when he left a US cinema in 1973, ā€œIā€™m a believer!ā€.

Smile, the 2022 horror film written and directed by Parker Finn, has one or two parallels with The Exorcist. Smile’s about possession of a sort, though the supernatural threat here appears to move more aggressively from host to host than the demon in Friedkinā€™s movie. (In this regard, the demon in Smile is more like the one in 1998ā€™s half-forgotten yet pretty good thriller Fallen, with its entity able to move almost instantly from host to host.)

The more interesting point of comparison, though, is that both stories are told from the perspective of older, professional women rather than the teens or early-20-somethings of most popular horror films.

Read more: Smile 2 review | The smiling demon is at it again in horror sequel

Smile introduces Rose Cotter (Sosie Bacon), a therapist at a psychiatric hospital who’s confronted by something all her years of training can’t explain. A patient named Laura (Caitlin Stasey) walks into her ward one day and says she’s being followed by some sort of supernatural being only she can see. Otherwise familiar people smile at her eerily, she says, while tormenting voices tell her she’s about to die. 

One horrific incident later (which we won’t spoil), and Rose also begins seeing family and friends leer at her toothily. Like Regan’s mother Chris (Ellen Burstyn), Rose is too rational to believe in things like demons or curses, and so she constantly tries to tie her visions back to a more mundane explanation. Her own therapist suggests that what Rose is experiencing is due to her memories of her abusive mother, who was a drug addict. But as the smiling faces and disturbing events intensify, Rose is eventually forced to consider that what she’s experiencing might really be otherworldly ā€“ and lethal.

Sosie Bacon ā€“ excellent as Rose in Smile. Credit: Paramount Pictures.

For all the gory, grisly details in Smile, the most horrifying moments are social ones. The stigma around mental illness runs all the way through Finn’s film, from the off-hand comments made by cops (“She was a headcase, yeah?”) to the way even close family members instantly distance themselves from Rose when she begins to act strangely. Finn’s handling of these latter moments is deftly even-handed; though we can understand why Rose’s fiancé might be disturbed by her behaviour, it’s also easy to be angry with him on Rose’s behalf.

Sosie Bacon puts in an excellent turn as Rose, and the slow disintegration of her character is affectingly portrayed. She shares traits in common with The Exorcist’s Chris ā€“ the cool, rational intelligence ā€“ but she can also be compared to the same film’s Father Karras (Jason Miller); both are haunted by memories of their mothers, and those memories are used by each story’s demonic force to torment them. 

What separates Smile from The Exorcist, stylistically, is how widely each filmmaker opens that door we brought up earlier. Where Friedkin let all that raw, unvarnished everyday realism flood in, Finn’s more cautious. The room in which Rose meets her patients is unfeasibly large, colourful and pristine. Rose’s sister describes the hospital she works in as being some sort of hellhole, but from a British perspective, it looks strikingly well-kept. Rose herself looks well-rested and composed at the film’s beginning, despite one character saying she’s essentially worked a double shift.

Roseā€™s office is huge, spare, and almost Kubrickian. Credit: Paramount Pictures.

Similarly, everyone in Smile lives in gorgeously-lit, sleek houses that look like home furnishing catalogues. Even Kyle Gallner’s likeable cop, Joel, lives in an upscale-looking apartment with artful posters on the wall. 

Note that this isn’t a criticism; whether he meant to or not, Finn and his production designers opted to give Smile a clean-edged, stylised look, only occasionally letting jabs of harshness enter the frame here and there, particularly in the elemental third act. It could even be argued that, from a commercial standpoint, Finn’s approach was the correct one. 

Rose’s fall is poignant and gut-wrenching enough in its current form. Had Friedkin, at the height of his powers, shot the same movie ā€“ highlighting the exhausting toll of Rose’s job, the bustle and chaos of a psychiatric ward, all before Rose’s demon-induced breakdown ā€“ the effect could have been shattering. Perhaps off-puttingly so. 

Originally slated for a direct-to-streaming release, Smile was so well-received by test audiences that Paramount put it in cinemas. Making its $17m budget back some 13 times over, Smile now has a well-received sequel, the $28m Smile 2. Had Finn opted for an even more unvarnished, matter-of-fact look at over-stretched, underfunded mental health services, and the often cruel attitudes that are still attached to psychological problems, then Smile may have been more unsparingly honest, but also too unpalatable for mainstream audiences. 

Sometimes, it’s possible to open the door too wide. 

Smile 2 is in cinemas now. Smile is currently streaming on Netflix in the UK.

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