User Reviews

This is an unbalanced movie, and I'm not sure what the purpose was. At the end a text states that 2% of the population suffers from "delirious episodes", so it's almost as if there's a mission intended, to inform the viewers about some dangerous medical issue. But in the 80 minutes before that, the movie seems to do its best to be (or at least to resemble) a downright thriller with horror elements.

After a rather over-the-top prologue, the next half hour was actually pretty good. Although nothing much happens, there's an atmosphere of estrangement and forebodings of creepy things to come. This feeling is enhanced when the main character and his wife come to spend a weekend at the villa of a befriended couple; the behavior of these friends seems increasingly awkward and unsettling. But then suddenly the whole movie tilts sideways and turns into a common, almost matter-of-factly executed slasher-flick. And right after that the movie tilts once again, and the who-kills-who is turned upside down in yet another slasher scene.

Of course I got the bigger picture: the young writer evidently fell victim to the same illness as his late father, completely with hallucinations and homicidal impulses (the afore mentioned delirious episodes). But the movie doesn't make this at all relatable, all the time we see this guy as a paragon of kindness and normality; it was as if we missed a whole piece of film that should have explained these events. As to the acting: Kevin Hesschentier is at least very pleasant to watch, and he was the only one who acted easy and convincing; all others acted contrived and unnatural.

Anyway, the feeling that remained afterwards is one of some good potential, but too much pretension in the writing and execution.

Why an English title for a French movie?;it's all the more annoying since the subtitle sounds better in the French language. It's also a most adequate title, since the borders of imaginary and reality are blurred;the girl alone in her bed is really a good trick and puts a question mark over the whole movie."Smile ",on the other hand , is a poor main title. It makes the final scientific explanation overkill ; keeping things vague would have been a better choice .

The first time I've watched it ,I fell asleep halfway through. But I decided to give the movie a second chance and it deserved it.

A treatment a la Polanski in its first hour, it only turns horror in its last third where the "delirious episodes " (2% of the population reportedly suffers from it ) take their toll , where the principal obviously opts for the umpteenth imitation of Anthony Perkins in "Psycho" : hasn't he childhood traumas too (in the prologue )?