Arion Polozani
Horror film Smile, starring Sosie Bacon as Rose Cotter, released on September 30th, to a twenty million dollar opening weekend, and one hundred million dollars globally two weeks after release.
Most people hadn’t seen any trailers of the film online, but in the weeks prior to the film's release, Paramount Picture had actors go to baseball games and smile for the entire game. Videos of this went viral overnight, which had everyone talking about Smile just a week before release.
This marketing tactic, paired with an early October release, was more than enough to have Smile surpass Bro’s, Amsterdam, and Don't Worry Darling, which was one of the most highly anticipated films this year. The film also has the highest opening weekend since Brad Pitt's Bullet Train in the first week of August.
Most horror movies will enter the box office with high numbers, but will quickly simmer out as time goes on, so a high opening with very low marketing is a surprise to most. Even paired with a release weeks prior to Halloween, Smile continued to dominate the box office even two weeks after release, an uncommon occurrence in horror, with only a 22% decline, one of the best in the industry.
However, according to audiences, this opening weekend was not deserved for a film that danced around an 80% rating on most rating platforms. On Rotten Tomatoes, the film received a 78% from both critics and audiences. Metacritic gave the film a 68%, and 85% of google users liked the movie.
“The movie was okay at best, nothing stood out to me except the mediocre story, the execution was lacking and the movie was repetitive. The thrill was solid, but in terms of overall enjoyment it was worse than I expected it to be,” NHS junior John Kwap said.
Although not bad, these ratings would not be suspected of a movie that had the best box office opening in two months, going over the release of highly anticipated films such as Don't Worry Darling, Bodies Bodies Bodies and The Woman King.
The reviews themselves were quite divisive as some users on Rotten Tomatoes said the movie was “not scary at all” and called it “more of a comedy movie” due to an issue viewers had with a lack of good jumpscares or psychological terror, both of which are important factors when crafting a good horror film. However, others called the film “One of the scariest to come out in a while” and “The best horror film of 2022”. Although divisive reviews are commonplace for new movies, there's often a middle ground that most agree on while Smile seems to either be a great film or a terrible one.