OTM #21: Scary Movie

Welcome back, everyone! Hope you’re having a great start to the new year. I certainly am – my roommates and I have been trying to watch a lot of new stuff during our downtime. I’m a fan of all sorts of genres, but I’m particularly partial to horror, so we’ve been watching a lot of scary stuff. I’m to a point where horror doesn’t really affect me anymore – I won’t get scared but I will be intrigued – yet for the first time in a long while, I was actually scared watching a horror film. We watched Parker Finn’s “Smile”, a movie that was well known on platforms like TikTok for making users cry in fear. I was always curious about it when it released, but never assumed I would be one of those fearful viewers. But oh my god, this film was insane. It follows a woman who is cursed by a malignant presence, taking the form of any random stranger who just stands there, smiling. I never realized a person simply standing and smiling could be so unnerving, yet once the film ended, I nervously laughed to my roommate – only to be met with a strained response of “Don’t smile at me right now!!” We had to turn all the lights on, turn on a silly cartoon and sit on the floor trying to distract ourselves long after the film ended. It felt like we were little kids at a sleepover. There’s a lot of joy there, despite the discomfort we felt. I missed that feeling of being scared.