Warning: Spoilers for Smile.A classic Stephen King movie adaptation provided Smile with its darkest, meanest twist. The horror legend also gave Smile a positive review on Twitter, calling it a “good, scary horror movie.” Evidently, the movie-going public agreed with King, as the movie managed to scare up a $22 million opening weekend at the domestic box office.
Stephen King has always been happy to share his takes on modern horror movies, with the author also using Twitter to praise Netflix’s adaptation Mr. Harrigan’s Phone. However, that review came with something of a caveat, since Mr. Harrigan’s Phone is based on King’s novella of the same name. Smile isn’t technically based on any of the author’s works, though the horror movie does borrow from one of King’s most underrated movie adaptations.
Smile‘s ending features a truly cruel twist wherein the movie’s heroine beats the entity that has been tormenting her, escapes a burning building, and is reunited with her love interest, only for the whole sequence to be revealed as a lengthy mirage set up by the villain. If that sounds familiar, it might be because the 2007 Stephen King adaptation 1408 features a surprisingly similar third-act twist.
How Smile Borrows 1408’s Cruel King Twist Ending
Stephen King’s underrated hotel horror story 1408 sees a cynical writer named Mike tortured by the titular hotel room’s creepy supernatural tricks. The movie culminates with its protagonist escaping the room by burning it down, reuniting with his love interest, talking through his ordeal, and then discovering he’s still in the room, just like Smile’s twist ending. After Mike realizes he’s still in the hotel, he decides to burn the place down for real this time — in the theatrical release, he dies, while in the director’s cut, he escapes with his life, but he permanently ends the cursed room’s existence in both versions of the movie’s ending.
In Smile’s truly vicious twist ending, the movie’s harried heroine, Rose, realizes she has been tricked just as the real love interest arrives at the real cabin. This gives the entity a witness to Rose’s traumatic death and, as she succumbs to helpless terror, the entity climbs inside her mouth and puppeteers her death in a moment of literally jaw-dropping horror. Smile’s final shot is a grim, brutal ending that takes the mean-spirited twist of the classic Stephen King movie and makes it far darker by killing off the hero and keeping the curse alive.
