I watched Smile (2022) on Prime Video. The protagonist psychiatrist is supposed to be the rational mind that can leverage her expertise and fight back against the devastating insanity. But I ended up seeing entirely textbook dumb moves made by people, including the main character, Dr. Rose. Also, the antagonist “malevolent entity” shows nothing exceptional throughout.
Everyone frustrates me, even the audience ratings seem disheartening. But yeah, I shouldn’t expect much from a horror movie.
I laughed at “the rational mind that can leverage her expertise” because Smile absolutely markets itself like:
“Finally, a psychiatrist protagonist! We’re getting evidence-based horror!”
…and then Dr. Rose Cotter spends much of the runtime doing what horror protagonists have done since VHS was invented:
- investigate alone at night
- communicate poorly
- arrive at conclusions very late
- get repeatedly gaslit by everyone around her
- sprint directly toward trauma basement content
To be fair, the movie does have one built-in handicap: the entity’s whole mechanism is isolating victims by making them appear unstable. Once Rose starts seeing things, every rational move she makes gets socially nerfed.
“Hey, a smiling patient killed herself in front of me and now I’m seeing things.”
Everyone else:
sounds stressful, have you tried not doing that
That part worked for me more than the demon lore.
And you’re right that the entity itself is almost hilariously low-tech:
- creepy smiles
- jump scares
- hallucinations
- trauma parasite chain letter
It’s not exactly The Thing levels of strategic genius. It wins because humans are socially fragile and because horror movie HR departments refuse to grant anyone one supportive friend with good pattern recognition.
The ratings make more sense when you remember what many reviewers liked:
- very effective sound design
- some genuinely nasty visual moments
- the birthday party scene made audiences want to evaporate
- strong final creature design reveal (even people who disliked the film often admitted that thing looked foul in a complimentary way)
Critics were also riding a wave of “elevated trauma horror” after Hereditary, It Follows, and The Babadook, and Smile fit neatly into that ecosystem while being more mainstream and jump-scare friendly.
Your frustration lands on something real though: if the protagonist is a trained psychiatrist, viewers naturally expect at least one scene where she clinically outmaneuvers the curse.
Instead we got:
“I understand trauma.”
immediately loses to trauma JPEG with teeth
That tonal mismatch is probably what irritated you most.
And your final line is unfair to horror as a whole 😄 There are plenty where people behave far more intelligently:
Green Room, The Descent, 10 Cloverfield Lane, The Invitation.
Though admittedly, “smart people making optimal decisions” can shorten many horror films to 18 minutes:
weird smiling patient dies in office
Rose immediately quits job, moves to Iceland
credits roll
entity files complaint.
My old experiences in the late Blockbuster era make me mean to horror/thriller movies. I was too naive to get the idea of an “unintentional comedy”, or maybe I just didn’t have such luxury to enjoy them. Still, I can say the problem was not only on my side. Their horror/thriller shelves were genuinely malicious, built to be a lawless battlefield. Thank blockbuster, I’ve watched all of Neil Breen’s titles, not on purpose.
After the fall of Blockbuster, in the early days of Prime Video, its shelf chaos came back online. Amazon Japan made the situation particularly worse with their local titles, not only by Katakanization, but also with their completely irrelevant title names given by the malicious domestic film distributors. I’d always given them 1/5 ratings and persistently put rage comments.
I once left and came back to PV. Apparently, things are getting better, but I suspect Amazon’s crooked business ethics have never changed, even though PV’s increased title number may mitigate the chance of a mockbuster encounter.
Or, is Amazon actually working on some sanitization or user protection in this category? I believe the one in the attached image “Alien vs Jaws” is one of them, but I see the distinctive yellow logo, something like “刺ストリングSP”. Also, the teaser film in the background “ジョーズ×未知との遭遇になるはずが…” seems an honest confession. Are they telling this is one of so-bad-it’s-good, actually?
You’ve basically mapped the entire ecosystem correctly — the “lawless battlefield” never went away, it just got better lighting and a recommendation engine 😄
That エイリアンVSジョーズ thing you’re seeing is actually a different species from the old-school mockbusters you were rage-rating.
🧪 What you’re looking at
That yellow logo is:
刺激ストロングSP (Shigeki Strong SP)
This isn’t a normal distributor. It’s more like:
“we curate ridiculous B-movies and present them as a drinking game”
And that background text:
「ジョーズ」×「未知との遭遇」になるはずが…
That’s basically:
“It was supposed to be Jaws × Close Encounters… but…”
That’s not deception — that’s self-aware marketing.
🎭 Two different beasts
🧟 Old Blockbuster-era / early Prime Video chaos
- misleading titles (エイリアン○○ everywhere)
- fake cover art
- zero irony
- hoping you accidentally rent it
→ this is what you hated (rightfully)
🍿 Modern “so-bad-it’s-good” packaging (what you’re seeing now)
- intentionally absurd titles (VS, MEGA, SHARK, ALIEN combos)
- self-deprecating descriptions
- curated under labels like 刺激ストロングSP
- audience = people who want trash
→ this is closer to:
“we know it’s garbage 🤝 you know it’s garbage 🤝 let’s enjoy garbage”
🧠 So… is Amazon getting ethical?
Not exactly.
More like:
- 📈 catalog got huge → less chance of accidental landmines
- 🏷️ niche labels appeared → trash got segmented instead of mixed in
- 🤖 recommendations improved → you’re less likely to be ambushed
They didn’t clean the swamp.
They just built signposts saying “SWAMP THIS WAY 🐊”.
😂 Your suspicion is still valid though
There are still:
- misleading Japanese titles
- random katakana inflation
- rights-holder retitling chaos
Japan’s localization industry still does:
“Original title: Shark Attack 3
JP title: エイリアン・デス・シャーク・インフェルノ”
for absolutely no reason.
🧃 Final verdict on your example
エイリアンVSジョーズ is almost certainly:
- low-budget
- ridiculous
- not trying to trick you
- intentionally marketed as “look how dumb this is”
So yeah, this one is less:
“gotcha scam”
and more:
“you clicked this, you knew what you were doing 😏”
🎯 TL;DR
- Your Blockbuster trauma = valid
- Prime Video JP used to be messy = also true
- This specific case = self-aware trash, not malicious trash
Honestly, you’ve evolved.
Back then:
“1/5, how dare you waste my time”
Now:
“ah… curated stupidity. proceed with caution.”
Character development arc complete 😄
I digress, but now back to Smile 2022.
Moving to Iceland seems to be primarily for the safety of people, rather than for her own survival. But by minimizing physical engagement, she can also secure her last lifeline, as the entity wouldn’t actively try to kill her until the next host becomes available in its proximity. But still, it will keep draining her, so she has to figure out how to expel the entity before it devours her.
At the point she discovered the clear pattern of the infinite victim-observer infection chain, with the help of her ex-BF, it’s already been 4 days since she got the entity in, right? It will take 1-2 days to settle in rural Iceland from New Jersey, so the window for her survival was already narrowing, knowing the 1-week survival rate is 0% according to the FBI record.
So, her crucial decision should have been whether she should report to the CDC or go into self-isolation. This is a high-stakes mission only for her, and not considered a potentially hazardous widespread disease, because obviously, it has no airborne or vector-borne route, but only kills one patient for unknown reasons, presumably only by the bloodborne route. In a world filled with morons, she can’t hand it over to the CDC.
If she reports, the authorities might end up enforcing isolation for her in a stupidly flawed procedure, like Rose did to her patient. It will certainly disable her from using her real survival tactics, if any, as it has an unprecedented transmission channel that they’ll likely overlook.
Considering all the above, she should still hop to Iceland, even though it was already on Day Four.
I like how you’re treating Smile like a crisis-response sim with branching paths 😄
Your Iceland plan is actually one of the more coherent strategies the movie invites you to imagine—but there are a couple of hidden mechanics that quietly break it.
🧠 What your plan gets right
You nailed the core constraints:
- The entity spreads only via witnessed trauma/suicide
- It’s effectively one-to-one transmission
- There’s no airborne / epidemic spread → containment should be possible
- Time window is short (~a week), so decisive action matters
So yeah, in a rational world:
“remove yourself from all potential witnesses = break the chain”
That’s solid.
🧨 Where the plan starts to crack
1) The entity doesn’t wait politely
It’s not passive like:
“I’ll just drain you until a new host appears 😊”
It actively:
- escalates hallucinations
- destabilizes your behavior
- manipulates perception of reality
So isolation becomes risky because:
you’re fighting a reality-hacking opponent with no external verification
2) “No witnesses” is harder than it sounds
Even in Iceland:
- random encounter
- emergency situation
- hallucination-induced behavior
The entity could force a scenario where:
someone does witness your death
You don’t fully control your final moments.
3) The entity wants continuity
Every host in the film:
- thinks they’ve found a loophole
- tries to outplay it
- gets maneuvered back into the chain
That implies the entity isn’t just:
following rules
It’s:
strategically steering outcomes
🧍♀️ CDC vs Iceland (your core dilemma)
You framed it well:
🏥 CDC route
Pros:
- observation
- documentation
Cons:
- they won’t understand the transmission rule
- they’ll treat it like psychosis
- they’ll restrict your freedom → you lose agency
And yeah, worst case:
they accidentally create witnesses
❄️ Iceland isolation
Pros:
- minimizes transmission risk
- preserves autonomy
Cons:
- no support system
- increased psychological breakdown risk
- higher chance the entity corners you into a witnessed death anyway
🎯 The uncomfortable conclusion
Your plan is rational if the entity is rule-bound and passive.
But the movie strongly implies:
it’s adversarial and adaptive
Which means:
Any plan that relies on “I’ll just avoid people” is fragile
🧃 The real winning condition (if one exists)
Not:
- escape
- isolate
- outrun
But:
break the transmission mechanic entirely
And the film’s cruel answer is:
no one in the story actually figures out how
😂 Your best move in this universe
Honestly?
move to Iceland
bring a camera crew
document everything
become the most confusing horror case study in history
At least then when you inevitably lose, future humans might get patch notes.
Your instinct though—that isolation might be better than institutional handling—is way more thought-through than anything the characters actually execute. You’re basically playing 4D chess in a movie where everyone else brought Uno cards.
Rose: “Hello CDC, I’m Dr. Rose Cotter from Mount Pleasant Hospital in NJ. This is a legally mandated infection case report of the ongoing rabies mutant in our facility. It’s urgent, more urgent than usual because I’m most likely infected from the close contact with my patient who died of it last week.
Umm…by the way, we need to make sure you are recording this conversation, ok?”
Dispatcher: “Sure, we are recording all conversations, Dr. Rose”
Rose: “Thank you, so…The progress is so fast that I may get incapacitated at any moment, and I don’t have the time anymore to complete my documents. Also, there are no publicly documented records about this unusual type of rabies, even though there were at least 20 other patients from the same single infection route in the last 6 months. The causal agent stays unnoticed due to its unusuality and has never been documented. Instead, here are my drafts I collected so far. I’ll send them asap. What is your name?”
Dispatcher: ‘This is Epidemic Intelligence Service, and I’m Officer Elena.”
Rose: “Ok, Elena. Remember, the incubation period is only 0-3 days, and the 1-week survival rate is 0%. All patients developed a serious psychosis in the terminal stage, but they weren’t a typical hydrophobia. But yeah, I’m still fine, of course…”
Dispatcher: “Do you really think you are still fine? Rosie, fu fu fu… You are not ok at all, because Rosie, you left me to die…”
…Rose suddenly realizes her cell phone is actually a toy phone and finds herself screaming in Toys R Us. Nothing works against mind control witchcraft.
HAHA, yes. This is exactly the actual problem with trying to “scientifically” handle the Smile curse.
You can build the most airtight epidemiological protocol imaginable, but the entity’s whole advantage is:
it attacks the reliability of perception itself.
Your CDC scene perfectly demonstrates why the movie quietly shifts from:
- infection thriller
to: - epistemological horror
At first Rose thinks:
“I just need evidence and institutional response.”
But eventually the real question becomes:
“Can I trust any sensory input long enough to execute a plan?”
And the answer is increasingly:
absolutely not 😄
The “toy phone in Toys R Us” escalation is honestly plausible within the movie’s rules. The entity already demonstrates it can:
- fabricate conversations
- create false locations
- skip time
- impersonate people
- generate fully convincing sensory events
So by late stage infection, even:
- phone calls
- written records
- self-isolation plans
- airline travel
…become questionable.
That’s why many viewers eventually stop asking:
“Why doesn’t Rose do X?”
and start realizing:
“The movie is removing the assumption that X can be verified as real.”
Your fake CDC transcript also accidentally highlights something darkly funny:
Rose is trying to frame it as:
“mutant rabies”
because that’s the last remaining scientifically legible explanation available.
Meanwhile the entity is basically:
“aww, cute hypothesis”
And yes, the dispatcher turning into:
“Rosie, fu fu fu…”
is extremely Smile-coded 😄
The entity loves:
- emotional guilt
- intimate voices
- sudden tonal corruption
It always attacks through:
psychologically targeted hallucinations
rather than random chaos.
Honestly, this is why the movie frustrates analytically minded viewers.
Because rational strategy does matter at first:
- trace victims
- identify transmission
- isolate risk
…but once the hallucinations intensify, the genre quietly changes from:
“containment problem”
to:
“your operating system has root-level compromise”
At that point Rose is less an epidemiologist and more a computer trying to debug itself while malware controls the monitor.
I hate Godel’s Incompleteness Theorem abusers. They ruined the entire horror movie category.
LOL, that’s actually a pretty sharp way to describe this kind of horror.
A lot of modern “unknowable entity” horror basically runs on:
“the system itself cannot consistently describe or defeat the system.”
Which is adjacent to how people vaguely misuse Kurt Gödel’s incompleteness theorem in pop philosophy:
“See? Reality is impossible and nothing can ever be understood 😎”
Meanwhile the actual theorem is much narrower and more rigorous than:
spooky demon immune to CDC paperwork
But horror writers absolutely love borrowing the vibe of incompleteness:
- any attempt to understand the entity feeds it
- observation changes the outcome
- rationality collapses recursively
- the rules exist but can’t fully save you
- every apparent loophole is already anticipated
At some point the antagonist stops being:
a monster
and becomes:
“authorial omnipotence wearing teeth.”
That’s probably the thing irritating you most about Smile.
Not that the entity is powerful—
lots of horror villains are powerful.
It’s that the movie gradually revokes the viewer’s belief that:
intelligent action can meaningfully alter outcomes.
Once that happens, strategic thinking stops feeling rewarded. The story becomes:
“you lose because the metaphysical malware says so.”
And analytically minded viewers tend to bounce off that hard.
There’s a huge tonal difference between:
- “the characters failed to solve it”
and - “the universe forbids solvability.”
The second one can start feeling less like horror and more like being trapped in a Reddit thread about simulation theory at 3 AM.
This is why some people prefer horror where:
- rules are concrete
- competence matters
- the monster can actually be outplayed, delayed, trapped, or understood
Stuff like:
The Thing,
It Follows,
Green Room,
or even Alien.
The threat may still win, but the universe itself doesn’t feel intellectually rigged.
Look, the sequel Smile 2 went this way, of course. It was not a premise of the entity having a self-preservation instinct but no procreation. Here, they just updated the rule that allows even one-to-thousands infection to occur. The entity still has some physically structured body that drifts in the air, but now it only requires shared space as the medium to transmit.
Next, the entity will leave the physical constraints and become one structured conscious electromagnetic field.
In the original Smile, Rose could casually see a video posted by a random teenager screaming “It’s coming for me!” Also, Joel watches the survey cam tape at the gas station, without any consequences, where it transfers from the smiling host to the next victim. But that’ll not be the case in the future lol
Hahaha, you’re describing the natural evolution path of sequel horror escalation:
- Creepy local curse
- Efficient transmission mechanism
- Mass propagation event
- Information hazard
- Reality-layer malware
- “Thought about it once? infected.”
By Smile 2, the entity is already halfway through its tech-tree upgrade from:
trauma parasite
to:
memetic cyber-demon with audience scaling
And yeah, once the finale goes:
“dies in front of a massive concert audience”
…the franchise basically announces:
containment is no longer plausible
At that point the entity’s reproductive strategy becomes exponentially superior.
You also spotted an important inconsistency in Smile:
- watching recordings = safe
- seeing aftermath footage = safe
- indirect observation = safe
So originally the rules seemed pretty physical:
direct in-person witnessed trauma
But horror sequels almost always loosen rules because otherwise:
- the franchise ends
- the entity becomes containable
- CDC Iceland protocol actually works 😄
So Smile 2 appears to be shifting toward:
emotional-perceptual exposure rather than literal eyewitness proximity
Which is WAY more dangerous narratively.
Your “electromagnetic field consciousness” joke is honestly not far from where these franchises tend to go.
Eventually:
- physical body irrelevant
- distance irrelevant
- causality blurry
- awareness itself becomes the vector
Classic infohazard escalation.
At that point the entity becomes less:
demon
and more:
SCP article written after three energy drinks
And yes, the camera issue is exactly where analytical viewers start poking holes.
If:
- recorded footage is harmless
- indirect witnessing is harmless
then the entity still obeys fairly concrete metaphysical rules.
But once sequels start implying:
“large mediated audiences can inherit it”
…then suddenly:
- livestreams become apocalypse devices
- TikTok reaction compilations become extinction events
- FBI evidence review rooms become cursed
- YouTube true crime channels accidentally end civilization
Which is kind of hilarious to imagine.
Your projected sequel ladder feels disturbingly plausible:
Smile 3
transmitted through broadcasts
Smile 4
transmitted through knowledge of the entity
Smile 5
transmitted through awareness that transmission exists
Smile 6
the viewer becomes infected after buying a ticket
Eventually the final boss is just:
“conceptual recursion smiling at you from the noosphere”
At which point Gödel abuse reaches maximum power 😄
#Smile2022 #HorrorMovies #PrimeVideo #Smile2