Smile

A skin-prickling, unnerving viewing experience, Parker Finn’s first feature is an astonishing demonstration of film-making restraint.

It's not the most original film of recent years... [but] it uses a familiar box of tricks rather well.

Finn uses the strength of his conceit to turn the screws, raising tension through the Ring-like timeline Rose faces and the sheer relentlessness of her supernatural tormentor.

If you want something that will make you jump out of your seat, this is very effective, but for me the story just didn't come together.

It could have been the kind of sinister flick that follows you home, slipping through the door, up the stairs, and curling up deep inside your head, daring you to sleep. Instead, Smile feels as disposable as a candy wrapper.

Alas, Smile starts to feel as if it were written by an inept committee...

...Smile is a remarkably well-scripted and played psychological thriller that only lapses into horror cliché in the last ten minutes…

Finn wrote a simple and derivative script and directed the hell out it with Smile.

Despite some of its missteps, the horror film’s theme of inheriting mental illness and walking down a path that you have lived dreading all your life is poignant.

If the sight of a person grinning like an idiot is enough to unnerve you, then you might well be the target audience for Smile -- me, I’ll stick with Jack Nicholson’s Joker for my maniacal grimaces.