Writer/director Parker Finn has turned the DNA from his short movie Laura Hasn’t Slept into a full, studio-backed movie. Set in the heart of New Jersey, Smile tells the story of Dr Rose Cotter (Sosie Bacon) as she attempts to figure out why she is being stalked by extremely freaky and mysterious characters on a daily basis, and if the disturbing trailer is anything to go by, then we are truly in for an unsettling time. STARBURST caught up with Parker to dig into the creative process behind Smile and much more…
STARBURST: Can you tell us how the idea for Smile first came about and how it links with your short movie Laura Hasn’t Slept?
Parker Finn: When I had been in post-production on ‘Laura Hasn’t Slept’, this idea for a much larger movie started to form that was, I want to say, inspired by the short. It was not the exact same, but there were threads of DNA from the short that were running through this feature idea that became Smile. I wanted it to be something that was not just a direct adaptation, but it was also something new. It’s not a re-tread of the short, nor a simple expansion, but rather a fully formed, separate story that just used the short as a springboard. I was interested in exploring the horrors of some of the things that we carry around inside of us, and I wanted to meditate on what it might feel like to have your mind turning against you. At the same time, I wanted to lean into the fear of not being believed by the people closest to you. I think that’s a universal fear, I wanted to take all of that stuff and see if I could turn it into a film that felt like a constantly escalating nightmare.
Were there any major challenges in making that a reality?
No more challenges than what it takes to develop a full-length movie in general. As I said, it wasn’t about taking the short and expanding it, it was about taking the things from the short that really inspired me and fusing them into the DNA of the feature. I find that I can only be made to feel scared or afraid during a horror film if I truly care about the characters. I really wanted to start from a place that was character-driven, and I wanted to tell a story that succeeded first as a human character drama, which also has these incredibly frightening horror elements infused into it.
Taking it back to Laura Hasn’t Slept and your other short movie The Hidebehind; was there anything you learnt from the directing process on those two shorts, that you just really wanted to apply, or even expand upon in Smile?
For me, hopefully, you get better with every project. When you’re making shorts with either no budget or a modest budget, you’re really up against it with what you can pull off. You’re constantly trying to figure out how to punch above your budget and your schedule. I wanted to take those same things and apply it to a feature film. Even though I was working with Paramount, we were a monster-budgeted studio film, but I didn’t want to let that get in the way or dictate, what kind of film I was going to make. We really set out to stretch the budget, schedule, and everything that we could, in order to tell a story that feels much bigger than the sum of its parts. Then visually, I’m somebody who really leans into prep, I shot this, my entire script before we headed into production, I worked on it with my director of photography, and really started to hone it in so that we had this insanely strong plan going into production. Then it’s all about trying to hold on to that North Star that we’ve set for ourselves, and execute.
We did want to ask, why did the name of the movie change from Something’s Wrong with Rose to Smile? Is there a big story there, or was it just a quick decision?
Something’s Wrong with Rose was certainly a bit of a play on the original thing that started it all with Laura Hasn’t Slept. It felt very fun. I love the ‘70s, timeless feel of that. The further along we got into post-production, we started really feeling how the movie was playing, and what the people we were showing it to were gravitating towards and grabbing onto. Working with the studio, the title Smile rose to the surface. We all agreed that it was a really strong title that captured the essence of the movie.
How did Sosie Bacon end up becoming Rose, and can you tell us about what she’s been like to work with, and just what she brings to playing Rose?
I knew from the beginning that the entire film was going to hinge on the performance of Rose. When I first met Sosie, I was incredibly impressed with her as an actor, how emotionally intuitive she was, and how committed she was to her craft. We figured out that we had very similar tastes in storytelling, and the kind of characters that we were trying to bring to life. She has this amazing ability to draw an audience in through nuance, through these moments. Where a character is experiencing something extraordinary, and really, really outside the realm of normal, and yet she grounds it in this amazingly human performance. The degree of difficulty with what she had to pull off for this film is enormous. The character is in almost every scene and she’s operating at these extreme levels of anxiety, stress, and fear, and it’s this incredibly physical performance. When you’re performing, your body doesn’t know the difference between real and the performance that you are putting on. So, it’s very gruelling and exhausting, but she tackled it in this really mature, amazing way. I personally think that she’s given one of the most stunning debut lead performances in recent years, and I can’t wait for people to see it.
From Jessie T. Usher to Kal Penn to Kyle Gallner, there’s a really great cast in Smile! Could you elaborate on what the main cast members have been like to work with, and what you think they’ve brought to ‘Smile’?
I really wanted to put together a cast that was surprising for a horror film. Jessie T. Usher plays Trevor, who is Rose’s fiancé, and he has this incredible, natural charisma and coolness to him, and he’s able to lean into this sense of detachment and a looseness that was very important to the character. I’m really excited for people to see why. Kyle Gallner has been really crushing it in genre films for years, I’ve been a big fan of his for a long time. He’s done so many awesome movies. I wanted to bring him in, he has got this thing about him, where you instantly want to root for him, that was very important to his character Joel. What I really like is that he is able to use humour as a defence mechanism, which was very important for his character. I have also been such a fan of Kal Penn for a long time, I grew up on the first Harold and Kumar, I think that he’s so intelligent, but has such a great sense of humour, and he’s somebody that you just instantly want to like. He plays Rose’s boss and mentor in the film, Dr Morgan Desai, and I wanted to cast somebody who could lean into the intelligence of that character, but also be somebody that we definitely didn’t want to be disappointed in us! That was very important. Kal was such a pleasure to work with. Caitlin Stasey was in Laura Hasn’t Slept and I was so impressed with working with her the first time around. When it came to Smile, there’s a role that Caitlin plays, which is not the same, but it’s parallel to the short film, and yet it sort of turns the whole thing on its head. There’s nobody else I could have imagined in the role, I wrote the role specifically for her, she came in, and really took everyone’s breath away with her performance.
Can you tell us about the main filming process for Smile? Where was it shot, and what was it like to put together over a pandemic?
We shot in New Jersey, in some of the cities. We were in Newark, Jersey City, and Hoboken, but we also got out into some of the suburbs and some of the more rural areas as well. We shot New Jersey for New Jersey and it quietly plays a character in the film. I love that there’s both an amazing industrial feel to it, but there’s also all of this incredible greenery, old rusty bridges, these very cool rivers, and just all of this amazing landscape there. We were very lucky because when we were in prep, everything was still green but we knew that leading up to our production that we might get lucky and catch fall just beginning to start, and we did. The leaves began to turn colours, it instilled this sense of autumn into the film. I think it’s this really wonderful thing, which I was very excited to be able to capture on-screen. We were shooting during COVID, and it definitely could have been a hindrance, but we had an excellent COVID team on set, who kept us safe while also making sure it was the least intrusive it could possibly be. I’m very grateful that we had a successful shoot during the pandemic.
You’re the writer and director on Smile, what is it like to balance these two titles as you work, and by being in both of these major roles, did you feel like you had the freedom to do what you wanted?
When you’re spending other people’s money, you never really have the full freedom to do whatever you want! But my partners at Temple Hill and Paramount were wonderfully supportive, and they really got behind the film in a major way. I’m incredibly grateful, I wasn’t sure what to expect when entering the studio machine, but I got to tell this story the way I really wanted to, and we were all on the same page from the beginning. For me, writing and directing go so hand in hand, I write things the way that I want to direct them. They become different stages of the same process. There’s a really interesting element when you’re both the writer and director where you’re writing all of these things that are going to be incredibly difficult to pull off, so by the time you get into prep, you’re cursing the writer, but it’s also yourself! That knowledge of anything that you put down on the page, it’s also going to be up to me to figure out how to do it. You keep that in mind, but for me, it’s always about trying to stretch the budget, the schedule, and punch beyond our weight class. I really like trying to set impossible tasks. Trying to convince actors that they can do impossible things, but also trying to convince my department head, my crew, producers, everybody that we can do all of these things that might seem insurmountable. If we all create a really solid plan and lock arms, then we’ll figure out how to do it!
Based on the trailer alone, and looking at those haunting smiles, We’re already getting a really freaky tone! How did you want this movie to feel for the viewer overall, and how did you go about capturing it?
Smile is going to surprise audiences while also respecting their intelligence. It’s intensely psychological, but it’s also shockingly visceral and physical. It’s got these big frightening moments that are hopefully going to cause the audiences to jump out of their seats and scream. But it also leans into this creeping sense of dreadful unease that I think, if we’ve done our jobs right, then it’s going to linger with the audience long after the credits roll.
How do you go about capturing an unsettling smile? Because in the trailer, the actors have done an incredible job at creating a disturbing atmosphere. I really felt like there must have been some kind of interesting process behind it?
I chose to use a smile to represent the evil in the film because I think of the strength of the inherent contradiction. Smiles are meant to be these warm, friendly gestures. They’re very inviting, and it’s something very primal in us as human beings. We learn how to smile as babies before we even learn how to speak, and I wanted to see if I could take that and flip it on its head, and allow the evil to wear a smile as a mask. To hide something really horrible and malevolent behind it, to use a smile as the promise of a threat. When it came to capturing them, I knew that from the beginning, I wanted them to be true human performances. I didn’t want to lean into visual effects, CGI trickery, or anything like that, I knew that if I could capture them through human performance then it would really lean into the eerie, uncanniness of it all. The way it actually began was with myself, before I showed anybody, just trying different stuff in the mirror, which felt quite silly while doing it! Then working with each of the actors, and I think somebody walking past might have found it quite humorous, we would stand a few feet away from each other and start smiling back and forth, honing in the exact smile. Once we got it right, it’s all about the unnaturally wide, way-too-toothy smile. The real trick is having these dead eyes that go along with it. Then it was really all about how we captured it, with the lenses we chose, the lighting, the colour palette, the blocking, and the stillness that was often involved with it, and really bringing in all of the other elements of sound and music, or sometimes silence. All of those things together create this really freaky alchemy that I can’t wait for audiences to experience.
How fun has it been for you to watch the reactions to the trailer?
It’s been really wild, it’s been incredible to see all of the reactions to the trailer. I’ve been in the theatre a few times myself, as a viewer to see other movies, and seeing the trailer play in front of a packed house, and nobody knows that I’m sitting in the theatre with them. Just hearing the audience physically and audibly recoil, react, and scream to parts of the trailer has been nothing short of amazing. I’m in that zone right now, where the movie is finished, but it hasn’t come out yet. It holds many mysteries that I’m excited for the audience to discover. It’s going to surprise them in ways, that I hope nobody will see coming.
Finally, why should STARBURST readers check out Smile?
Smile is a really, really intense, unique movie. It’s going to scare you, it’s going to shock you, it’s going to make you want to cover your eyes. It’s this mysterious, nightmarish, rollercoaster of an experience that as soon as the credits roll, you’re going to want to turn and discuss it with your friends and debate some of the mysteries from inside it. There’s nothing that can prepare you for what’s going to happen.
Smile is released in cinemas on September 28th. You can follow Parker on Twitter.
