10 Exact Moments Recent Movies Won Us Over
1. The Opening Scene - Smile
The trailers for last year's horror hit Smile did it an utter disservice, painting it as another lousy, unintentionally comical genre offering in the vein of Truth or Dare.
Yet right from its very first scene, Parker Finn's directorial debut proved it was anything but that, and in fact, it served up the best scene right away.
Smile begins with protagonist Dr. Rose Cotter (Sosie Bacon) heading to work and meeting a seemingly mentally disturbed young woman, Laura Weaver (Caitlin Stasey).
Laura explains she's being pursued by an entity which assumes the guise of other people who smile at her in an exaggerated, horrifying way, all while telling her she's going to die.
Rose understandably believes her to be mentally ill, at which point Laura panics and insists the entity is in the room with them, before having a seizure.
As Rose calls for help, Laura grabs a shard from a broken plant plot and slashes her throat, while keeping her eyes fixed on Rose and still smiling.
Even at the end of the scene as medics bag up Laura's body, that grin is still stuck on her face, ensuring that despite its inherently absurd premise, Smile is absolutely a horror movie to be taken seriously.
Even if the rest of the film had taken a huge nosedive in quality thereafter - which, thankfully, it didn't - that opening sequence is a brilliantly crafted short film in its own right.