Though not as strong as other horror films released in 2022, Parker Finn’s feature-directing debut offers a haunting exploration of trauma and fear.

Smile leans too heavily not only on formulaic mystery plotting, but also on horror themes and imagery lifted from popular hits like The Ring and It Follows.

What's worth your time in TV and movies this weekend? EW's critics review the latest releases: 'Smile,' 'Bros,' 'Andor,' 'Reasonable Doubt,' and 'God's Creatures.'

What Parker Finn's 'Smile' lacks in originality, it makes up for in effectiveness, as a woman fights off the worst smile she's ever seen.

Smile will leave you wanting to revisit the movies this one 'borrows' from.

Ruben Östlund's Palme D'Or-winner hits a fat target dead center and two new horror films follow trends from different eras.

Cunning studio horror about a curse that grins you to death

'Smile' feels plucked from our collective unconscious like a paralysis demon.

Smile promises viewers will leave with terrified faces

A creepfest about a curse that causes killers and victims to sport psychotically joyful smile knows exactly how to get under your skin, one unnerving expression at a time.

I have mostly frowny faces for “Smile,” a bluntly unsettling and blandly grim new horror flick that wrings as much mileage as it can out of a twisted grin.

A psychiatrist fleeing her own trauma discovers a grisly, self-replicating chain of destruction

A therapist looks like she's losing her mind in a shocker that puts a happy face on trauma.

‘Smile’ suffers from never evolving past the basics – that trauma begets trauma and, if left unchecked and unexamined, can consume a person’s life

Any thoughtful or true exploration of mental illness and how it manifests is cast aside in favor of the increasingly gory encounters that torment Rose.

The plot trappings might seem familiar, but writer-director Parker Finn creates something very new and very terrifying

Movie Review: In the new horror film ‘Smile,’ Sosie Bacon plays a psychiatrist haunted by the suicide of a creepily grinning patient. The film starts off wonderfully scary but eventually becomes somewhat boring and predictable. Kal Penn co-stars.

Fantastic Fest: The phrase “smile through the pain” takes on a menacing new meaning in writer/director Parker Finn’s gruesome film.

Sosie Bacon excels as a psychiatrist pursued by an evil curse in Parker Finn’s derivative yet solidly scary feature debut

To remove my filter for a second, I thought Smile was going to be stupid. Everyone saw the trailers, and I'm not sure how anyone could believe it wasn't just going to shape up to be a lame horror film with a half-baked gimmick. But this is why one actually goes to see the movie, isn't it? We're now

“Smile” walks a line in which one constantly wonders if the movie is just dumb, or so dumb it’s looped back around to smart again, writes critic Katie Walsh.

Smile is an often terrifying exploration of anxiety and trauma with a supernatural twist.

Sosie Bacon stars in "Smile," but Laura Weaver steals Parker Finn's horror movie about a twisted curse. Review.

There’s enough horrible invention to make Parker Finn a director to watch

There are traces of It Follows and The Ring in Parker Finn's diabolically effective horror movie Smile.