Smile (2022) review

Immediately after listening to new patient Laura Weaver (Caitlin Stasey) rant about "seeing" a creature that "wears other people's faces" and then take her own life, therapist Dr. Rose (Sosie Bacon, daughter of Kevin and Kyra) starts having hallucinations herself, so she does research into the matter, releases she's been "cursed" and tries (but fails) to break the spell.  Finn does a nice job tapping into primal fears regarding exaggerated grinning - if someone was doing that to you in public you'd definitely be on high alert - but his dumber-than-dirt directorial debut is just an amalgamation of ideas "borrowed" from J-Horror as well as the work of Ari Aster, James Wan and David Robert Mitchell (as well as the cover art from various Aphex Twin albums) with a steady abuse of jump scares (full confession: two of them startled me).  It leans a little too hard on the "trauma" aspect - which the "villain" "feeds on" - and actually has its protagonist return to her childhood home where her mother committed suicide ... which then gets set ablaze: it's an all-suffocating darkness with no light to peek through anywhere.  Sosie's famous parents allegedly tried persuading her from working in the industry, but she's got some (inherited?) chops: it must be exhausting pretending to be terrified every single scene.