The Reel Rejects - SMILE - Movie Review & Spoiler Talk!!

Episode Date: November 20, 2022

SUPER FREAKY!! Smile Full Movie Reaction, Recap, Breakdown, Spoiler Review, & Ending Explained. Finally checking out one of the BIGGEST horror movies of 2022 starring Sosie Bacon (13 Reasons Why, Mare of Easttown), Kyle Gallner (Scream, A Nightmare on Elm Street), Kal Penn (Harold & Kumar, American Horror Story), Jesse T. Usher (A-Train on The Boys) in a truly-chilling, supernatural funhouse ride - now streaming on Paramount Plus! #Smile #MovieReaction #FirstTimeWatching #Paramount #Horror #HorrorMovie Become A Super Sexy Reject For Full-Length T.V. & Movie Reactions + SMILE Watch Along! https://www.patreon.com/thereelrejects Support The Channel By Checking Out Our High-Quality Merch: http://shopzeroedition.com/collections/reel-rejects-merch Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/the-reel-rejects/support Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I'm 32, juggling family, working full-time and earning a bachelor's degree. At University of Phoenix, I earn career-relevant skills with every five-week course, skills I can use now, not just after graduation. Earned skills weeks, not yours. Visit phoenix.edu. At Chipotle, we also have a playlist. Guacamole as it's being hand-mashed, the sizzle of adobe chicken on the grill, the chopping of onions and cilantro. We call our playlist, real.

Order now. Chipotle, for real. what is happening there listeners at the reject nation we are going to watch the movie smiled and talk about it so all you got to do is sit your fine ass down and listen to us yeah if you want to catch the reaction

it's up on youtube.com slash the real rejects other than that just shut the fuck up and listen it's funny between this and don't worry darling we've had two movies with like really good paranoid breath based scores yeah there's a lot of prevailing tropes nowadays that's right

and Daniel Kaluya was a lot of names to keep up with this day yeah yeah yeah we got a whole new slate of stars socy bacon must be she's great she's two years younger than us

damn go to hell go to hell yeah who do you think you are that much more successful screw you that talented at this age screw you yeah get off your high horse but who played gregg yeah yeah find him nick are no isn't freaky that's right he's in freaky

he was funny dude calpang getting his paycheck he did uh he did uh you know he did show up he did uh read the assignment yeah good old new jersey so we saw what the thing was entity did to her was what happened to the girl at the beginning of the movie crawled up in her mouth

it reverse consumed her yeah man they could really sequel this out and just ruin it yeah they would never ever have to stop they could really ruin this movie and make it a bunch of weird dumb gags you know how every i want the dumb gags smile movie. I want to tear it. Smiles. Smiling. Smilers. The smile. The smile. And then the ringer sequel called frown. I'd be down for it, man. Let's make it happen. I don't care.

More smile gags. Yeah. More unpacking of shit. Just, yeah, just pick a different trauma each time. Yeah, I liked the movie. I liked it a lot. I thought it was pretty great. Yeah. You know, a bit. a trope in the outline of how it would all go down yeah um but it really to me it's about the the details of it all you know like it's not like it was a hundred percent predictable or something like that and it wasn't you know like especially on the freaking jump scare moments like they're really good at that and yes it did have me for a while but the second you go into the

territory of investigating a former person who also had this and visiting that person. I'm like, okay, it's real. Yeah. Yeah, because if they just kept it about like the patient and her, then I would have been like the whole movie going. Yeah. In her head. But once they start

unpack, the second they do that thing of someone else before her. Yeah. There's a cycle. Yeah. Other people. There's one survivor. We've got to go talk to. Yeah. I think that's why like something like Baba Duke, which, you know, obviously. horror movies i'd be a hypocrite is i i'm the main thing that i'm a big love to write that's my main

passion and yeah whenever i write with something of horror it tends to be some element of trauma it is about facing and it's a very prevalent thing to do nowadays too and i think we're studying the genre so much you start to see like all the connective tissues but there are some good fake out moments and some really good and i love the i love the specificity of it and especially um That's her name Kevin Bacon. Socey Bacon. I mean, I'm sure she's six degrees or less from Kevin. Yeah, I think she's just so excellent of, like she is very real for a character who has to constantly find a, trying to keep herself composed and have a sense of control and understands what perception looks like for the outside looking in.

I think it was it was wonderful in the way her her performance feels very real in that regard especially because you know there are a lot of cliches about therapists themselves and psychiatrists who like the cliche of like they have a hard time being psyched themselves yeah I mean therapies themselves because they know too much you know more often than not a lot of people I know I mean who get apprehensive about going to therapy are the ones who are like I might agree is in psychology my degree reason. Yeah. So I should just be able to do it myself. So when you're like this far down the rabbit hole and and also with like the more I love the depiction of the the more she's pushed to basically having to confront her trauma the more resistant she actually becomes over time. Like when she does visit oh my god when she does visit the who is the character in the jail the prison oh michael k william yeah was he yeah i don't remember the character's name was he i don't know i'm getting card on that uh i feel like he

we're on the smalls imdb page yeah he was a surprise appearance i feel like they didn't want to maybe ex exploit it you know i guess that would make sense but he's not credited on on imdb funny enough in my now you can put his name in there that is him right yeah yeah they reserve it for like a cameo yeah yeah i mean that is that is a good call um that is true yeah why did they not um reveal it's not like i would have been watching this movie going it's got to be michael k williams coming up um that's we're wrong is it a different actor maybe

and we just thought it was him that's embarrassing i'm so confused right now it is odd that they wouldn't be credited it at least yeah and iMdb is usually the place where they'll like catch it you know or or they'll yeah they'll mark it if it's uncredited it's so strange um michael k william smile movie uh i guess not who knows i know i've seen that actor before i thought it was michael k williams the whole time yeah i did too

I mean, the character doesn't even look like he's credited in an IMDB. No. So that's got to be him. We can't get hung up on this right now. We've got a whole movie to talk about John. So, yeah, when the, when, like, the more resistance, like, when she does leave the place, the prison. And she's like, he's just a crazy guy, you know, and she starts sounding like the people who surround her, basically. Because there's a bit of that joker equality with some of the way the people talk about mental.

health in oh constantly it's like man all you guys like just that uneducated you guys have like no concept everybody is so brazen and yeah is so kind of uh callous about mental illness in this movie yeah there's like a bit of because the movie clearly has an understanding of what it is that's the that's the ironic part to me is like the movie clearly has an understanding and a and a very vivid depiction of it with one with their main character and even to an extent the relationship with her sister it's it's really like

the way especially her fiance I'm just like oh yeah what like he's the one who to be like it's mental illness isn't it it could be passed down generally like this this is weird yeah that that part was the part that kind of reminded me of like the way

the movie Joker would sometimes talk about mental health or it's like you have to explain it for you it didn't feel like lived into me but the depiction of what really counts of the main girl i thought was really of socy bacon i thought was was uh wonderfully fleshed out and and and and i and weirdly enough you know even though there's a big fake out moment i thought it was cool that they did the whole grief thing where she does get to acceptance and a

realization about herself within her own mind um that they it felt like the movie really let her get to that point even though they also the movie got to have its cake you need it to where yeah she does end up taking her own life and then smile monster goods inside her and stuff so they got to do both and I thought the way they landed the button of acceptance was felt and I liked how it came through what was different for me especially in a lot of these horror movies was that it came through with the relationship with Joel because I thought it was just like eh you know I kind of expected a bit of more of a cliche background with them like he's a cop she's ducked you know yeah yeah yeah and

And then to find out that it was through her relationship with him when she realized how scary it was for her to be vulnerable and let people into who she really is, that she bailed on this. And I thought that just gave that relationship so much more depth and went against the cliche of who the cop of ex-boyfriend character was very well. so yeah while there's some parts in the way the beats that they go to feel a little cliche and derivative sure uh i think for the most part the the details are very very much involved and exciting and i think some some of the best jump scares too like these are well done jump scares these aren't these aren't you know hacky hokey like sometimes you can see something coming but more often than not like what the fuck yeah well it's because the movie I think the strength of the movie in general, it's interesting to look at because, yeah, like, in a lot of ways, if you just look at the nuts and bolts, it's quite straightforward and it's quite well-trodden territory for, you know, a haunting thriller of some kind.

And so, yeah, I mean, there are all those, you know, sort of tonal things you can check. And I think what's great is, yeah, you have your sort of like, oh, it's kind of like a Babadook or it's kind of like a haunting story or it's kind of like, yeah, just a psychological descent. But, yeah, what bolsters everything is the fact, I think, that, yeah, they took the time to really hammer the script out and to really at least, yeah, give the characters, the main core characters, at very least, Rose, you know, a good, rich history as a character to work off of. It's like, A-Train is like, you know, I think it's funny. It's like he's kind of relegated to the part of, like, you know, girlfriend. would be in the flip scenario of a lot of these movies where it's like you know there's not really much to that character

whatsoever so it's not like it's the whole thing is like entirely fleshed but the important things are given a lot more personality and nuance and I think setting it in I think it's clever to make it so that she's a therapist because

yeah it's it's we watch these hauntings and these things happen to regular people so often so putting it in the hands of somebody whose job it is to know the mind and who would at least be a few steps ahead of, you know, the reality logic in a situation like this. I think, like, those things help to make it rise above what it is. And then I also think on the opposite end, you have this quality with the gore gags especially that feels like it's out of another kind of horror movie. Like, there are some really icky, really disturbing, like, gore and creature gags.

that i don't know if i've seen applied to a movie like this in the same way i'm sure there are examples but it did feel like that was the most sort of um outside of this particular genre's element that they incorporated because it's like the jump scares and stuff i think they work so well just because they do a really great job of of pulling you into the performance and pulling you into the emotion of the situation and so yeah then they can have fun poking at you because so much of the other stuff. It's just, yeah, it's like you're watching a movie by people who clearly know how to do drama and to take that drama seriously.

And I feel like there are a lot of movies like this where it's trying to, you know, do those scenes, but get to the jumps. Whereas this is like, no, it's like we want you to live in the anguish and the psychology of this character. And then we're going to disconcert you with the jump, you know. So it's like a movie you've seen a thousand times before, but it's, I think, well conceived for what the core themes and elements are and it's just really skillfully done and it's interesting to watch this kind of on the on the heels of barbarian because in ways i i feel like

there are similarities in that sense of like you have spoilers but you know you have this thriller you have this descent into madness but you also have a creature element um but that movie by comparison is much more sort of it feels much more of like a wild ride because of how it's structured out whereas this is like very linear and very straightforward and it's funny when it ends because in a lot of ways yeah it is kind of what you expected this is not how you expected it i think yeah yeah i mean i think for the most part yeah because like the thing is the the horror itself is very effective it's very effective horror yeah that stuff is executed well like what you're talking about with the gore gags especially is you know there's like a couple

ways you do jump scares of course and sometimes you just cut to something scary like when she's at the laptop listening to the sound so that's like you're there she's at the cameras having you focus on that and you expect a certain thing and then you get something completely different or the i think to me the one of the most brilliant ones the scary moments is the one where the sister comes walking to the door and you know as the audience like that's probably not really the sister but the last visual you expect is what you got it and so like a truly unexpected horrifying visual captured in that perspective through the car window where you can't see the head because you're just bend down smiling or some shit you know because i think that i think they

build pretty well with the gags you know i i really do like the way they they handled a lot of it and i they really got me invested in the characters because yeah there's a lot of this that feels very much like Bobadook, Hereditary 1408, it follows Ring. There's a lot of these movies where it's like, I remember, I think very early on, why in the reaction? I even

said like, I said like way before, like yeah, there's going to be some fake out thing that everything's fine. Yeah. But that's not going to be the thing. It's like you could tell it's going to do something like that. But even that fake out I bought into because like 1408 does that in a way that was not believable

to me. I remember watching 1408 Spolish a fortune to wait Where do you think he's out of the hotel The hotel room There's a whole thing where he like goes back Reunites with a wife and all this And it's like a year passes or something shit Like it's all the time like

He's still in the hotel He's still know it's all in his head And then sure enough it's all in his head Like yeah I don't buy it And then here I bought that she at least Went back to the apartment I didn't I was like Okay yeah clearly it still followed her

But I did not think it was still at the cabin like the movie really sold me on that you know and i think that's really clever and so as someone who consumes a lot of horror i'm always impressed i'm like ah shit it really you're really can it really got me and it is it is scary it's it's spooky stuff and and there's some really well written i think the drama is really well written with with um i think everything about rose is written really well yeah you know even even with the joel character written really well and and and and i think they find these moments to have nuance in unexpected ways like with the sister you know where it's like you just seem like you got the loud annoying bitchy's sister and then suddenly they have this this argument out front and again it plays so much into that whole thing of because because the movie's doing both where it's a recreation of trauma because she's not over it but it's also doing the monster movie simultaneously where uh And I thought it was one of the rare cases where it was able to do both, have both, where sometimes I feel like I might, not with any of the movies.

I just listed, but sometimes I might be like, ah, you should just pick the one lane and stuck with it. Like, barbarians very much, they just, it's a monster. It's like, it's like, it's like freaking crazy movie. And it's not like, this is in their heads, you know? No, they stick with, they stick with what they're doing. and like baba duke takes a very specific direction too in the end without i'll go i'll gladly get 14 away away but i'll get bobby duke takes a very specific type of ending you know and hereditary kind of has you guessing until the last frame yeah uh and then here it did both where it is about

overcoming trauma trauma recreation but then you also get clued in like halfway through the movie make it very evident that no it's also an evil entity following you around movie it's not just in their head and I thought like it actually didn't undercut the other one of it's in their head just would have been more fun if I was like it's in her head but it's

it's the fascinating case because I'm trying to think of another movie that has left me with this feeling because yeah I think part of why it's taken off so huge and why it does stand out is because yeah it

it chooses to blend those things because yeah especially within I feel like you know if you just had it be jump scares and there wasn't really any sort of too crazy of a monster element or something like that it would just feel like a pretty straightforward psychological hunting story and so yeah it's like even though the even the combination of the elements doesn't make it feel entirely unique it does feel like a unique execution and it's just like well made enough and it has a lot of stylistic flourishes without going too, you know, in your face with it,

to indulge. And I really liked, you know, the, when they chose to do their crazy upside down or spinning angles, I thought they were all really deliberately chosen. And, yeah, even for the characters who don't really get much flesh on the bone, you know, it's like the actors still showed up

and still understood the assignment. And it still has this, the requisite sort of deteriorating, festering aura of just this just gets more and more grim as time goes by and I think it's interesting to see something like this where I'm like there are so

many identifiable elements that I've seen a bunch of times but this felt fresh from just a pure experiential kind of perspective. They don't ruin it for me. It doesn't undercut it for me and I was really gripped by the immediate moment and I didn't see big weird

creature coming up at the end. And I'm like, that's fucking insane. And I really like the design of that. That was really unsettling and jarring. I really like that design. This is like it follows if they had the budget to do everything they wanted. That was the thought that struck me. I was like, this feels like the kind of movie that would get made for very cheap,

except they didn't have to make it for very cheap so they could do all the things they probably wanted to do all along. No, it is like those A-24atapyrna films with a book. budget you know and and I think there's like I heard people say this is a slow burn and I'm like no it's not like it takes its time I wouldn't call us a slow burn that it no like a hereditary is a that shit that shit is like you might get freaking impatient wondering who is going to kick off and I would argue that it's not being a true slow burn is part of why it's working so well for people because you have so many of those I thought it was a bum house movie yeah I saw the trailers and I was Like, I just assumed this whole time it was Blumhouse.

It is like the blend of those two. It's like it's the blend of the A-24 paranoia sensibility, but with all the exploitable pulp that you want from a Blumhouse movie that often people feel deprived of in an A-24 horror movie. Well, I think the part of it that made it so refreshing, the part that I think they handle very different, is normally in these dissent performances with female lead, They are just going crazier.

Sure. And I think with the way they depicted Rose is, yeah, she is going crazier. However, it's a struggle for composure and sanity and not just succumbing to the insanity, you know? Yeah. And I think the way they handled that, there was something that just felt very real of this constant awareness of how other people will perceive her. And I thought that felt very human. or it's usually characters and movies, not saying it doesn't feel human,

it's just that usually characters in movies, they completely lose sight of how other people are going to perceive them. And she never once loses sight of that. And like her struggle of what to do and how to proceed about it, I thought was handled really well. Because because of the fact it deals with the mind,

like when she does go to the hospital, when she first does stab the patient, at the first time she stabbed, I thought that was real. Then a couple of stabbing later, it was like, okay, it's not real. but I first bought into it that it was real like I didn't question it all that she wasn't really there

and the movie does do a great job at because like the way she interacts with people of there's always this constant nuance of like I think her performance is brilliant because there's this constant nuance of I got to be polite I got to be nice I don't know if you're real though yeah there's always this paranoia

and I'm there with her of any time he's interacting with someone like are they real yeah and the movie did a good job on convincing me of that like i never know when she's talking to someone who's real yeah yeah yeah totally it doesn't do too much tele telegraphing that way and that enhances the surprises and that enhances your ability to just tap into her perspective and it uses the perspective really well yeah and i mean they spend i appreciate that they do so much with performance and they do let the camera linger and that contributes to whatever jump scares around the corner but also it it serves the both purposes in a way

that like any good scare gag or action sequence or whatever should where yeah there's character in here but also it's guiding your attention away from what we're about to poke you with or whatever and yeah and her journey feels

it's funny this movie feels like a popcorn like pulp movie but the core drama her core performance the writing of her character feels like something out of yeah like a legitimate a more legitimate drama yeah that was done really well i was really impressed there's some great music um i love the art design uh i love the

it feels very much like those a 24 movies so like that yeah it's like solid there's something about the lighting it's like a mixture of like a flat mike flanagan type of thing and well they knew the hospital rooms and stuff yeah they know really well how to use both darkness and shadows and and limited light without cheating but also to use the light of common or familiar places in a way that makes you uneasy. I don't know. I think the reason why the things that are definitely reminders of other movies, I just kind of get the impression that this writer-director genuinely loves those things and probably loves those kinds of movies and stuff.

And it was probably referencing it in the process of making it, you know? Yeah. So it doesn't feel like I'm just going to copy this or this is what works. Nor is it exactly like I'm on my, I'm paying tribute to it. It's just what he would reference in making these things, you know. For whatever reason, I just feel like the pitch was, what if that PG-13 Blumhouse movie you thought you're about to see was also an R-rated 824? This feels like, because, yeah, and even I do think that that one drool shot is an alien.

direct reference and especially because the effects people have done work on at least some of the alien movies a lot of times when people are directing all they really have to do to kind of convey to their like their DP and everyone is like it's come for like this the shot here yeah like when you put these movies together you put together look books and then look books you're you're you're pulling images from other shit so they can be like we're kind of looking for want to look like this movie yeah yeah so I feel like you know it's that's what it was it wasn't like to steal or something yeah and then sometimes you can get a vibe when you're like you're just copying other shit you know or you're you're not i don't want to slight like this

too harsh but i feel like that's kind of the vibe of don't worry darling to me as much as i actually enjoyed that movie there are parts of don't worry darling that i'm like i don't feel like you're that aware of how derivative this feels that you know yeah this isn't his revelatory as you might think yeah i've seen this before that wasn't the vibe i got with this film because even like the whole visiting the guy in prison who happened to survive and he's kind of crazy like there's a lot of tropes that are very familiar um he's from stranger things like the second that's where that guy's oh he's the hoppers guy yeah he's one of the two cops the other cop my bad yeah good thing we didn't say michael k williams in the reaction

And we waited till the review part. I know. Now I feel bad. That's right. They could play siblings. They look similar. They do. In a non-racist.

And it's been very it. It's been a long time. I thought that was Tom Felton for like 30 seconds. That's why a joke saying it was him. I thought that was funny. See, like I recognize. I like the Kyle Garner seems down for horror movies generally because that's where I know him from. But when you said that, I was like, oh, yeah, it does look like.

Especially now, how Tom Felton lives. Yeah, I thought it was. Yeah. Oh, yeah, he's in Scream. Mm-hmm. He's in Scream. He's in the remake of Freddy. He's in a few other horror joints.

Well, guys, what did you think about this movie? I quite enjoyed it a lot. That was fun. Yeah. It was a good year for horror. Good year for horror, mate. All righty. Well, leave your thoughts down below.

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you are the spirit of iowa it's just amazing chaise chase it's all sincerity you've been supporting us for so long i didn't even realize it has been that long um so thank you for being with us for as long you have been and it's it's an honor to have you here and to have someone who supports us like that loyally or does not go overlook so thank you buddy for for everything remain in our hearts and very thankful for you right now so thank you buddy