Director – Parker Finn – 2022 – US – Cert. 18 – 115m
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After a psychiatrist witness a patient smile then commits suicide, she finds herself stalked by a malevolently smiling presence – out in UK cinemas on Wednesday, September 28th
A patient describes her condition to Psychiatrist Dr. Rose Cotter (Sosie Bacon) who then witnesses her apparently see something which drives her to suicide, smiling malevolently as she slices half of her own face off. The patient has previously described an entity which appears as people, sometimes people she knows, sometimes strangers. She can see it but no-one else can. And it’s always smiling at her. And now Rose can see this entity smiling at her, which suggests she’s next. Especially when it starts chanting, “you’re going to die” over and over again. (Spoiler alert: you’re going to die. We all are, sooner or later. So this really isn’t such surprising news.)
Just as she herself had done to her patient, those to whom Rose attempts to explain her plight come up with psychological explanations – childhood trauma, her genes, she’s been under a lot of stress lately and so on. There’s a certain daft pleasure to be had in such films that no-one ever takes the obvious explanation (here, that this woman is being stalked by a malevolent entity) seriously.… Read the rest