Warning: This article contains minor spoilers for the movie Smile.
With a viral marketing campaign that’s been creeping everyone out online, Smile is the film on everyone’s lips right now.
While on the surface, the film’s premise is essentially “what if The Ring, but with smiling?”, Smile is a two-hour thrill ride jam-packed with jumpscares, twists and turns at every corner. Just when you think you’re safe, it gets you again.
The film follows Dr Rose Cotter (Sosie Bacon, of Mare of Easttown, 13 Reasons Why and Scream: The TV Series fame) who, after witnessing a bizarre, traumatic incident involving a patient, begins experiencing terrifying occurrences she can’t explain. With a whole bunch of trauma in her past, Rose has to confront her personal demons as she fights to escape her new reality.
Speaking to POPSUGAR Australia, Bacon, as well as her co-stars Jessie T. Usher (The Boys) and Kyle Gallner (Scream), the cast of Smile revealed the moment they knew they wanted to be a part of the film while first reading the script.
“For me, it was the call, when the alarm goes off and then she answers the phone and it’s security and then she turns around and you have this expectation that something’s gonna pop out, but it doesn’t,” Sosie explained.
“It takes a beat, and then…” she paused. “I just thought that was pretty surprising and really fun.”
Sosie added that the ending “was really awesome in the script,” calling it “really well executed”.
Kyle agreed, saying that it was the ending that clinched the deal for him.
“I read the script, I was really enjoying it all the way through, but then, sometimes with horror movies, they don’t stick the landing, you know what I mean?” he said. “With this, the very, very, very ending, I was just like ‘ooh, that’s so brutal, that’s so mean!’”
He continued: “It went all the way, it didn’t hold anything back, and after I read that I was like ‘that means the entire movie’s gonna be brutal, and relentless, and really go all the way.’ So once I saw that, I was locked in.”
Jessie, meanwhile, said that he was “hooked pretty early on” when reading the script for the first time.
“It was right after… you see that thing that happens with Laura, and then they’re talking to Rose about it, and it’s a very simple line, but it just showed me how twisted the movie is about to be,” he explained.
Jessie turned to Sosie. “All you say is ‘she was smiling at me’, and you know, on the page it just says ‘she was smiling at me’! And it’s such an innocent line, but you know as the reader and you know the audience will hear that line and think ‘that’s DAUNTING’, like ‘that’s twisted!’
“I was just looking forward to page after page after that,” he said. “I was hooked early on, page 12 had me!”
Smile is in Australian cinemas from September 29, 2022.
