SMILE

The film starts in the bedroom of a woman who has recently overdosed. Her young
daughter enters her room and witnesses her mother’s body lying in a mess.

Currently, the daughter, Rose Cotter (Sosie Bacon), is a therapist, going about her
day at work. She deals with a manic patient named Carl (Jack Sochet). He
continuously mutters about people dying and that he will die. Rose attempts to
comfort him, but Carl continues with his episode.

Rose then receives a call for an appointment with a young woman, Laura Weaver
(Caitlin Stasey). When Rose meets her, Laura is distressed after a recent incident
where she witnessed her professor bludgeon himself to death. Since then, Laura
claims to have seen an evil presence that takes the form of others. After turning
away from Rose and looking back, Laura begins panicking and freaking out. Rose
calls for help, but she looks back to find that Laura has picked up a broken shard
from a vase and is now flashing an unsettling grin. Laura slashes her throat before
help arrives, leaving Rose in shock.

Rose speaks to two detectives, one of whom is her ex-Joel (Kyle Gallner), for details
on the event. She explains what she saw and talks to her boss, Dr. Morgan Desai
(Kal Penn). Later, Rose goes to her home that she shares with her fiance Trevor
(Jessie T. Usher) and their cat Mustache. Rose and Trevor go to dinner with Rose’s
sister Holly (Gillian Zinser), and her husband, Greg (Nick Arapoglou). Still, Rose is
so traumatized from Laura’s suicide that she snaps at Holly when she chastises
Rose about forgetting Holly’s son Jackson’s (Matthew Lamb) upcoming birthday.

Rose attempts to go back to work and move on. She receives a call from Holly, and
they both apologize for the argument, and Holly asks Rose to at least get Jackson a
birthday gift. While they talk, Rose looks out the window and sees what looks like
Laura in the distance. When Rose walks by Carl’s room, he is seen with a disturbing
smile like Laura and begins to tell Rose, “You’re going to die repeatedly!” She calls
for help, and Carl gets restrained by orderlies.

When Rose goes to buy a gift for Jackson, she sees an apparition of Laura again,
still grinning. She cannot find Mustache at home and is startled when the security
alarm goes off. She gets a call from the security company, but it turns out to be a
malicious entity that taunts Rose.

Over the weekend, Rose goes to Jackson’s birthday party. When it is time to give out
gifts, he takes Rose’s, which is supposed to be a toy train. Instead, Jackson opens
the box and finds Mustache’s corpse. Everyone freaks out, and Rose tries to assure
everyone that she did not do this, but she sees one of the other moms appear to
have the entity’s evil grin. Rose stumbles backward and falls through a glass table,
severely injuring her arms.
Rose is brought to the hospital for medical attention. Morgan visits her after
becoming aware of her episode and suggests she take time off work. When Trevor
gets home, Rose tries to explain herself, but he thinks she is losing her mind and
that she did kill Mustache. Rose also has a session with her therapist, Dr. Madeline
Northcott (Robin Weigert), who helped her get through her mother’s suicide trauma.

Rose begins to do some investigating. She plays an audio recording from her
session with Laura and hears what sounds like a faint breathing noise. Laura’s
professor, Gabriel Munoz (Felix Melendez Jr.), also looks up and tracks down his
widow Victoria. She tells Rose that Gabriel had claimed to have seen visions of
something haunting him just days after he witnessed another woman named Anna
Powell commit suicide. When Rose claims that she is experiencing what Gabriel did,
Victoria thinks that Rose is mocking her tragedy, and she orders her to leave.

Rose visits Joel for help in her investigation, despite his initial reluctance. He looks
up at Anna Powell and finds that she died by gouging her eyes. It is also reported
that Anna saw a man commit suicide, shown in security footage from a gas station
where the man is seen with a creepy smile before he impaled himself in front of
Anna.

When Rose returns home, she finds that Trevor has called Madeline to provide a
house call session since they are concerned about Rose’s mental state. Rose snaps
at Trevor, saying he is more concerned with how she will make him look, leading to
her storming out and breaking up with him. Rose also visits Holly to attempt to
explain to herself about the birthday, but Holly will not forgive Rose and says that
she is spiraling as their mother did. Rose fires back that Holly never attempted to be
there for their mother and that she had to take care of her until the end. Rose returns
to the car and appears to see Holly walk back to her, but it is just the entity haunting
her.

Joel escorts Rose to a prison, where she meets the sole survivor of the curse,
Robert Talley (Rob Morgan). He tells Rose that the entity latches itself onto people’s
trauma and spreads itself to new victims. Each victim witnessed a suicide, and they
became the next victims, so Robert killed someone to prevent the entity from killing
him. When Rose tells him that she cannot kill anyone, Robert freaks out and thinks
that Rose brought the entity with him, forcing him to be restrained.

Rose goes home and tries talking to Madeline, seeing her at home on her own
accord. This is the entity in disguise since Madeline calls her for real moments later.
The entity (as Madeline) grins at her and says Rose’s time is coming.

Fearing no choice, Rose drives to her job with a knife. She enters the building and
finds Carl’s room, where she goads him into freaking out. Morgan runs in and sees
Rose stabbing Carl repeatedly. He screams and appears to tear his face off…but
this is just a nightmare Rose had after passing out in her car. She drives away when
Morgan sees her and the knife in her car.
Rose calls Joel and tells him that she has to isolate herself to stop the entity from
spreading to anybody else. She drives up to her childhood home, where her mother
died. When it is dark, the entity appears to Rose as a tall, long-haired monstrous
version of her mother, always smiling. Rose expresses her anger toward her mother
for how she behaved due to her illness and how she never got the help she needed.
The entity follows and taunts Rose until she sets it on fire and runs out of the house
as it burns. She then goes to Joel’s apartment and claims she finally got rid of it.
Then Joel tells her that she can never get rid of it…and he flashes a creepy smile.

Once again, Rose was dreaming. She is still back at the house. The entity finds her
and tears its face off before stretching Rose’s jaw open and climbing into her mouth.
Joel enters the house, only to find Rose dousing herself with kerosene. She turns
around, flashing her creepy smile, and lights herself on fire in front of a horrified Joel.
She passed the curse to Joel as he smiled.