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, are they 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 😄