Actors boasting eerie grins were planted in the audience of multiple Major League Baseball games as part of a viral marketing campaign for the horror movie Smile, causing a ruckus across social media as they were caught on film.At least three people were spotted on screen multiple times during live broadcasts of three baseball games on Sept. 23. The first was a grinning person wearing a yellow shirt with the word "Smile" emblazoned across it, who was caught on camera during an Oakland Coliseum game between the Oakland Athletics and the New York Mets. The second was a person dressed in blue who stared eerily into space during a Yankee Stadium game between the New York Yankees and the Boston Red Sox. The third was a person wearing a "Smile" shirt at the Dodger Stadium's Los Angeles Dodgers versus St. Louis Cardinals game.All three people were snapped by unnerved stadium-goers, and the connection with the upcoming film was eventually unearthed on Twitter. According to these aggregated tweets, another Smile actor was even seen photobombing the background of NBC's The Today Show.
What Is Smile?
Smile is directed by Parker Finn and serves as both his feature film debut and a continuation/reimagining of his 2020 short film, Laura Hasn't Slept. The movie features Sosie Bacon as Dr. Rose Cotter, who witnesses a traumatic incident involving a patient and begins seeing horrific smiles everywhere she goes.
Part of the film's promotional campaign, aside from placing actors in baseball stadiums, has been a site dubbed Smilesightings.com where people can upload images of themselves making unnatural smiles. At least one image of the smiling woman at the Oakland game has been posted to the site.
Distributed by Paramount Pictures, Smile hits theaters on Sept. 30.
Source: Twitter, YouTube