Smile director wanted horror film to feel like 'sustained panic attack'

Clark Collis
·3 min read

The horror film Smile (out Sept. 30) may have a jocular title, as well as Harold & Kumar star Kal Penn among its supporting cast, but writer-director Parker Finn makes clear that his directorial debut is no laughing matter.

"I wanted to set out to make something that was deeply frightening and feels like a sustained panic attack from start to finish," says Finn. "We're working with really heady themes and motifs and pairing them with these extraordinary circumstances. I really wanted to ground the story, the drama side of things, so [the audience] can really care about the character and go with her on that journey when it all really really starts to ramp up."

Smile
Smile

Walter Thomson/Paramount Smile Sosie Bacon stars in 'Smile'

The character in question is Dr. Rose Cotter (Sosie Bacon) whose life begins to unravel after a patient seems to commit death by suicide while sporting a diabolical-looking grin. Before long, Cotter finds herself haunted, and tormented, by other figures wearing similar smiles.

"Smile follows a clinical psychiatrist who is working in a public hospital setting," says the director. "She has a bizarre, traumatic encounter with a patient, and afterwards begins experiencing all kinds of really frightening occurrences that she can't really quite explain, and starts to believe that something evil may have come in to her life."

To oversee the creation of the film's creature, Finn recruited the legendary special effects make-up team of Alec Gillis and Tom Woodruff, Jr., whose many credits include 1990's original Tremors, Death Becomes Her, and the two It movies.

"I grew up on practical effects," says Finn. "Practical effects were one of the things that really drew me to horror films. I knew from the beginning there were certain elements of the film that I really wanted to try to pull off practically. To Paramount's credit, they got behind that idea and supported it, but there were some real logistical challenges [to] what we wanted to do, especially late in the film. I'd been such a fan of Tom and Alec's work over the years, and I got to hop on a Zoom with Tom, and we spent two hours geeking out about practical effects and how they can be used to enhance storytelling. We were so lucky to get them. In my opinion, they're like rock stars. Some of those things that we put in front of the camera, I remember the entire crew gathering around, and it was definitely a pinch-me moment of real movie magic."

Smile
Smile

Paramount Pictures Director Parker Finn and Sosie Bacon on the set of 'Smile'

The smiles worn by the actors in the film were not the work of make-up effects artists but the result of the cast's own facial muscles. Did any of the cast suffer from smile-exhaustion during the shoot?

"It's funny, because some of the takes are not brief, and I think, yeah, they definitely were feeling it in their cheeks," says the director. "But, to their credit, they were really really committed to the performances. I'm really pleased with how they turned out."

Smile opens in cinemas Sept. 30. Watch the film's trailer below.

Want more movie news? Sign up for Entertainment Weekly's free newsletter to get the latest trailers, celebrity interviews, film reviews, and more.

Related content: