Shadows on the Wall

Smile

dir-scr Parker Finn
prd Marty Bowen, Wyck Godfrey, Isaac Klausner
with Sosie Bacon, Jessie T Usher, Kyle Gallner, Robin Weigert, Kal Penn, Rob Morgan, Judy Reyes, Gillian Zinser, Caitlin Stasey, Nick Arapoglou, Dora Kiss, Kevin Keppy
release US/UK 30.Sep.22
22/US Paramount 1h55

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Gleefully grisly, this horror thriller plays with audience expectations to create some superbly nasty moments, and it even includes a hint of depth in the back story. But writer-director Parker Finn uses gimmicky tricks to jolt the audience rather than create scary suspense. This may be noisy, visually disorienting and hyper-violent enough to keep genre fans entertained. But those looking for something more engagingly unnerving may be disappointed.

New Jersey psychiatrist Rose (Bacon) is badly shaken when a frazzled patient (Stasey) kills herself while grinning maniacally. And now Rose is experiencing her own delusional visions. Her fiance Trevor (Usher), sister Holly (Zinser) and boss Morgan (Penn) are all worried about her suddenly erratic behaviour, while her former therapist Madelaine (Weigert) suggests that Rose return to regular sessions. But Rose wants to get to the bottom of this, so she turns to her detective ex-boyfriend Joel (Gallner). As they unearth details, they begin to realise that Rose's turn to die is coming very soon.

From the first shot, this is a skilful flurry of wacky camera angles, unsettling sound effects and hints about what might happen next. Anyone who has seen a scary movie will have little problem working out the trajectory of the plot early on, but Finn continues to pile on red herrings, random plot threads and morsels of information about both Rose's history and the chain of suicides that stretch back before her patient. And of course, since she's a shrink, she's fully aware of how crazy she sounds.

Bacon dives fully in, investing sparks of personality along with enormous emotionality. Rose is sleep-deprived, so her decision-making abilities are getting wobblier by the hour, and Bacon manages to keep her sympathetic through each wildly outrageous situation. Her scenes with Usher are terrific (until he simply vanishes), and she has strong connections with Gallner and Zinser, who nod knowingly to their character histories. And you certainly can't go wrong with expert scene-chewing cameos by Morgan and Reyes.

Along the way, Finn continually dribbles in details from the past into the script. But these are never properly fleshed out to mean anything, becoming little more than another manipulative storytelling element. Still, Finn orchestrates all of these tools adeptly, piling on grotesque gore while leading the audience to a series of bonkers climaxes that feature just about every kind of visual nuttiness anyone could want from a movie like this, including a fire and a freakishly murderous mommy who seems destined to have a franchise of her own.

themes, language, violence 27.Sep.22

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