Now that Final Destination: Bloodline is set to make overcomplicated deaths cool again, I think it’s time to discuss one of the best modern horror creatures: The Smile Entity. Smile could have easily been an It Follows rehash, complete with the seemingly unstoppable paranormal boogeyman. However, the final moments of the film reveal the horrific truth: there’s a very real (and very creepy) monster behind the Smile curse. And there’s nothing you can do to stop it. At least, not unless you have a very flexible definition of “morality”.
Here’s how it works: the Entity in Smile latches onto people who witness a suicide; not just any suicide will do – the person dying must be the Entity’s previous victim. It’s just like the monster in It Follows, only with psychological trauma instead of sex. However, there’s a catch. In the first Smile film, we learn that you can escape the curse if you’re willing to take a life (with a witness) before the creature forces you to take your own.
Killing someone to save yourself already sounds like a terrible deal, considering the trauma and moral repercussions of such an act. In a way, you’re always dealt a terrible hand as soon as the creature has its eyes set on you. Even the only known survivor of the curse, Robert Talley, managed to “overcome” the curse at the cost of his freedom.
So, how would anyone escape the curse in the “safest” way possible? Well, there might be a loophole involved – but it still depends on you being able to kill someone, and even extra dastardly about it, to boot.
Alright, here’s the deal: the Smile Entity is onto you, and the only way to shake it off is to traumatize someone by killing an innocent victim in front of them. So far, so bad, right? What you’ll need for this experiment is A) a victim (preferably a criminal of some sort) and B) a quadriplegic person.
I know, I know – it sounds awful, but here’s how it works: first, you take out the criminal, making sure the bedridden person witnesses the deed, so you pass the curse onto them. That’s pretty much it. Now, the Entity has to deal with a subject that’s unable to kill themselves, and you still committed a crime – even if who you took out was a horrible person. Sure, the quadriplegic person would still be out of luck, but hey, at least you’re free, right?
An alternative to this is finding a terminal patient willing to be a sacrificial lamb instead of the quadriplegic person, but you’ll still have to deal with the moral burden of knowing that you’ve pretty much sentenced them to a fate likely worse than death. In all honesty, these loopholes only prove two things: 1) There’s just no easy way to escape the entity, and 2) We need a new Smile movie right now.
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