The theater was PACKED TO THE RAFTERS this evening, and what a perfect flick for communal fear. Ha!
It really was a blast.
Good as the movie was, however, the greater revelation of the evening was newcomer Sosie Bacon (daughter of Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick) in the role of psychiatrist Dr. Rose Cotter. I had never heard of Sosie before, but she crackles with energy and oozes charm and an undeniable charisma. She's a real delight! I'm eager to see what she makes of her career. She's definitely got the chops for a great one.
If you're looking for fresh October fear, do see SMILE.
I'm pretty sure the question "What ARE you?" will haunt me for days.
Yikes... GOOSEBUMPS!!
P.S. SMILE's runtime is 01:55:00, which is about 10 minutes longer than a lotta contemporary horror films. I don't know about you, but I always feel sorta cheated by movies that are 01:40:00 and less. I guess my point is to simply call attention to the value proposition here, because SMILE is lengthy and affords ample time for viewers to really settle in, explore some shadowy corners, form a couple hypotheses regarding who's up to what, and see imaginations run wild. (Unlike, say, 1980's Friday the 13th which, classic as it remains, has a meager runtime of 01:35:00, leaving barely enough time at the tail end for Jason Voorhees to jog-and-jab his way around Crystal Lake, and precisely zero time for one's 'theater of the mind' to do any measure of proper, serviceable lifting — the sort of lifting that multiplies memory-making, rallies recall, and ensures sufficient stickiness on the order of Nosferatu or Pinhead for subsequent long-term nightmaring.)
