Smile is a mash-up of at least a half dozen other horror movies you’ve already seen. And it sadly seems to think it invented the genre all by itself. What else can explain the ridiculous almost two hour runtime when this thin premise really only needs a generic ninety? I didn’t hate it, I didn’t get bored by it… I got impatient with it.

Smile is about a doctor whose patient goes nuts, smiles broadly, and ends her own life. The doc is now infected by the curse or demon or entity or bugaboo and will spend the next couple hours on jump scares and fake-out dream sequences.

This movie is so smug at its own brilliance when it’s just regurgitating the same horror tropes that we’ve seen before. I got tired of the same scene repeating over and over again like we, the audience, couldn’t keep up. Yes, explain the plot again to yet another disbelieving character. That worked so well last time.

The camera work, cinematography, acting and even the unsettling (if a little overkill) sound design are all good enough that I’m convinced a shorter, more succinct, and less smug version of this film would have been great. But I was just over the movie’s shit within the first thirty minutes.

It follows that this movie borrows so obviously from movies like, um, It Follows, The Ring, Truth or Dare, The Empty Man, and, yes, even The Bye Bye Man. And nobody should be compared to the Bye Bye Man. Or steal the smiling demon face from *gulp* Truth or Dare. That’s both rarified air and pig sty they are borrowing from.

I didn’t hate the movie, but I was super impatient with it. It’s really just a well-made generic horror movie that’s better than some and worse than others. It’s a frustrating film since the seeds of quality are there, but they were so proud of what they were making without realizing it’s all been done before.

Score: 74