10 Recent Movies That Avoided Obvious Mistakes

Though horror film Smile was generally accepted to be a pleasant surprise by most critics and genre fans, there were those who found issue with its ending, whereby protagonist Rose (Sosie Bacon) fails to defeat the focal trauma demon, ultimately being compelled to kill herself and pass the curse on to her ex Joel (Kyle Gallner).

Some took the rather facile reading from Smile's ending that filmmaker Parker Finn was telling people afflicted by horrific traumas that there's no hope for them, rather than simply trying to deliver a climax to his film that was appropriately intense and upsetting. And while some speculated that Finn might deliver a reactionary sequel in which new protagonist Skye (Naomi Scott) is able to defeat the demon, this thankfully wasn't the case at all. Finn instead stuck to his grim guns and once again had the hero fail to win, with Skye meeting an arguably even more violent and disturbing end than Rose.

While it's absolutely fair to say that a third Smile film might start to lose audiences if the hero isn't ever able to win, it was at least a relief that Finn told precisely the story he wanted to here without compromise. Making a storytelling pivot because of what online film fans want is almost never a good idea.