What Makes the Smiles in em Smile /em So Freaking Creepy

How can something understood as the universal symbol for joy so easily become the makings of our worst nightmares? Unhappy, unsettling smiles--like those in Todd Phillips' Joker or the truly chilling masks donned by Ethan Hawke in last year's The Black Phone--appear here to stay as fixtures of the horror genre. Paramount's new flick, directed by Parker Finn, makes the concept its very premise, with the movie following a psychiatrist plagued by smiles everywhere she turns. Baseball fans got a taste of her strife thanks to a stunt marketing campaign for Smile featuring actors smiling creepily behind the dugout. Whereas the 2018 horror film Truth or Dare used CGI to stretch the smiles of the actors like a Snapchat filter befitting the uncanny valley, the smiles in Smile for the most part do not appear digitally modified, by my estimate.