Smile is a memorable horror film for a couple of reasons, ranging from the genuine frights of Parker Finn's atmospheric direction to the jump scares of a simple smile. In fact, the force behind those grins is one of horror's most memorable recent threats and could be an indicator of the film's potential as a franchise. And one of the best elements of Smile is the film's commitment to leaving the details of the Entity vague while defining it as a threat -- quietly setting it up as a potentially perfect horror movie monster for future stories.
At the heart of Smile is the unnamed and mysterious Entity. The malevolent and mysterious force spreads through trauma, targeting the host's perception of reality and breaking them on a mental level before overtaking them and forcing them to take their own life. The presence isn't explained or explored, with no exposition dump to explain how this force exists and why it was created. Instead, it's more of a horrifying force of nature in the film, breaking Rose Cotter (Sosie Bacon) down and eventually shattering her defiant attempts to evade and overcome it.
How Smile's Ending Sets up a Dark Franchise
The film ends on a down note, as Rose's attempts to confront her own traumatic history ultimately fail to free her from the Entity. Instead, it overtakes Rose and forcibly possesses her before forcing her to light herself aflame right in front of her ex-boyfriend Joel (Kyle Gallner), presumably spreading the curse onto him. By its very nature, the Entity has a lot of power as a monstrous force, capable of spreading from person to person with little rhyme or reason. A good portion of the film is spent revealing how the Entity works -- and how there's little to do to stop it. The only guaranteed way is to break the chain by murdering someone else -- spreading the trauma to someone else but sparing the victim's life. That continues the spread of the Entity and quietly confirms its longevity as a storytelling device.
The Entity is a unique horror villain, even within the context of being a massive force that crawls inside people's mouths. On top of having little clear motivation beyond breaking people and forcing them to spread its trauma, it's an endlessly versatile monster. The Entity could appear as anything to anyone, playing on any number of traumatic storylines. The psychological and cerebral elements of the monster -- a clear parallel for how mental health is often stigmatized in western culture -- give it an additional power that could be explored from all sorts of perspectives. In theory, the Entity is a perfect horror movie monster, reflective of a horrifying real-world challenge while being flexible enough of a concept to be applied to all sorts of stories.
Where the Smile Franchise Can Go
Smile has already proven to be a big hit at the box office, and the filmmakers could elect to make an additional chapter in the story. It wouldn't feature much of Rose for obvious reasons, and Joel's storyline being doomed by implication could easily allow the chain to travel elsewhere. Smile has the makings of a potentially enduring franchise that explores the impact a crumbling mind can have on someone and use it to discuss heavy topics with the blunt but effective edge that the horror genre generates naturally. The Entity could appear to other people in different forms, relying on different types of scares for different people. Smile could be a potentially very flexible story going forward, and the Entity might be a memorable yet malleable enough force to generate plenty of storytelling potential.
To see the Entity's potential, Smile is currently playing in theaters.