Warning: Spoilers for Smile.
There is no denying that Smile’s ending is deeply bleak, but the horror movie’s shocking dénouement does have a meaningful message underlying its brutal twist. Smile surprised critics and audiences alike when the movie premiered in September. Despite a trailer that made the release look like a mash-up of elements from other genre hits, Smile instead turned out to be one of 2022’s most successful original horror movies.
However, not everyone left the cinema satisfied. One of the most divisive elements of Smile is the movie’s brutal twist ending, wherein the heroine Rose appears to finally defeat the entity that has been tormenting her throughout the movie. Rose drives back to her ex-boyfriend Joel’s house and admits that it was her unacknowledged trauma that led to their breakup and that allowed the entity to overpower her, resulting in Rose vowing to face her fears head-on. Then, in a twist borrowed from Stephen King’s 1408, Smile reveals that Rose never escaped the entity. This cruel twist seems pitiless, but it underlines Smile‘s message that confronting trauma isn’t a one-off cure-all.
Why Rose Dies In Smile’s Ending
Rose dies in Smile’s ending because she was only able to overpower the entity once. She had enough fight in her to take on the gangly demonic monstrosity and even appeared to kill it, shattering a lantern over its head. However, once she escaped the remote cabin, arrived at Joel’s house, and gave her speech about facing her fears and sharing her burdens with loved ones, the demon’s revelation that this had all been a mirage led Rose to give up entirely. She was sure that the demon would never stop tormenting her and that she could never overpower it, resulting in her accepting her fate.
What Rose’s Death Really Means
The ending of Smile improves on horror movies like It Follows, The Ring, and Truth or Dare by taking their trauma metaphors to their logical conclusion. In those movies, curses follow victims around, reappearing whenever the hero calms down or feels safe. However, in Smile, Rose never gets any reprieve from the curse. The entity hounds her relentlessly and with a gleefully sadistic streak, and it is dead-set on eventually overpowering her. Rose’s mistake, ultimately, is that she keeps running and fighting before eventually giving up. When she encounters the entity in the form of her mother, a better alternative emerges, and it becomes clear that she needs to confront her demons.
Like Stephen King’s IT villain Pennywise, the entity in Smile can take the form of its victim’s greatest fears. Since Rose lost her troubled mother to suicide at a young age, the entity exploits this by assuming the form of her later mother. However, a surprisingly collected Rose speaks to the entity (in the form of her mother) and forgives her mother for her struggles and Rose’s younger self for being unable to help her. The entity quickly rebounds by taking the form of a big eight-foot tall gurning monster, but Smile’s ending still makes it clear that Rose could at least temporarily disarm the demon by accepting the darkness in her past.
How Rose’s Death Sets Up Smile’s Sequel
Not only is Rose unable to defeat the demon in Smile’s ending but, in a truly vicious twist, the entity waits until Joel arrives before possessing and killing her. This means that it will be able to live on in him since the curse needs a witness to pass itself on. Rose realizes early on in Smile’s action that the reason her client killed herself in front of Rose was to ensure that Rose would contract the curse. Every victim before Rose’s client had forced someone to witness their death, too, ensuring that the daisy chain of the curse continued unabated. Rose herself hoped to end this cycle in her abandoned childhood home.
While she assumed no one would be able to find her in the middle of nowhere, Rose failed to account for Joel’s attempts to save her. Smile’s sequel is set up when Joel arrives too late to save her, but in time to witness her death and thus become the curse’s next victim. It is not clear whether the entity knew how long it would take Joel to reach the cabin or if the demon was simply bluffing, but these are questions that could be answered by a sequel to Smile. Whether the next movie will reveal more about the demon’s abilities and origins or keep them ambiguous, however, won’t be clear until a sequel to Smile is announced.
