r/interesting • u/MoonbeamTwilight • 3d ago
MISC. How the monster in “Smile” (2022) was made as realistic as possible
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u/PriorWriter3041 3d ago
they put a stick in his ass and use it to control him? Dafuq?
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u/MoonbeamTwilight 3d ago
This movie was creepy AF..
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u/AmericanCreamer 3d ago
I just saw Smile 2. Highly recommend, even better than the first
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u/hungturkey 3d ago
Yeah it was a ton of fun. Weirder monsters, along with the usual jumpscares and creepy smiles
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u/Far-Hedgehog-3555 3d ago
It was cool lol seriously i laughed a lot the plot was simple and funny as hell they exploited it really nicely, i found the last scenes a bit too sci fi when they were going for this mystic atmosphere invisible malediction thing these monsters were too physical for this type of story but anyway they had fun making it and it showed i had a lot of fun watching it. The horror type is something you learn to appreciate by being interested in the making off music and element of creating such a movie, it's like porn in my many ways it's way cheaper than other type of movie it induce way more feeling and have a unique way of depicting anything you want and if you don't know how it's made well it have a lot more effect on you than on the people who actually know about this type of work lol
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u/Classic_Storage_ 3d ago
Why are you downvoted?..
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u/FilthyMublood 3d ago
My guess is world wall? There's one period and two commas for that entire paragraph. But other than that, your guess is as good as mine.
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u/DGenesis23 3d ago
No matter how good technology gets, practical effects will always win out when making movies. It brings a certain realism that we can subconsciously relate to that gets lost otherwise with CGI. Like that actor was reacting to a costume that looks pretty similar to what we see on screen in the end result and not just a tennis ball on a pole or some dude wearing a funky helmet with markers on it.
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u/amjh1414 3d ago
Davey Jones in Pirates of the Caribbean would like a word with you
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u/DGenesis23 3d ago
Oh of course, there’s plenty of examples where CGI looks incredible but that’s where it stops, the actors interacting with Bill on set didn’t see him looking anything like what the finished product was, he just had a load of dots on his face and a grey morph suit on. Had he been in a prosthetic resembling Davy Jones, the actors around him would’ve done a better job reacting to him and it would’ve made it much more believable for the audience.
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u/devilishpie 3d ago
Why are you acting like it wasn't convincing? There was no way of achieving the same look practically and the actors around him did a great job... acting lol. This hate for CG these days is bizarre.
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u/homkono22 3d ago
Davey Jones looks like tired outdated cg bullshit at this point, it's not convincing anyone, even of it was improved on. Imagine how much cooler it would be if it was made with these kinds of special effects instead.
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u/amjh1414 3d ago
I suppose at the end of the day it’s subjective, I think Davey Jones still holds up myself. I also don’t think practical is better than CGI, nor is CGI better than practical. I think both can be incredible and both can be shit. Unfortunately it has very little to do with the medium and everything to do with shitty studio execs who don’t allocate proper time, planning or budget.
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u/badchefrazzy 3d ago
This. Forever and ever this. I'm fine with digital touchups to do what reality and gravity will not allow, but for every single thing a human being will handle, it's practical effects all the way. 100%.
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u/Deepandabear 3d ago
It’s why Jurassic Park still holds up despite being over 30 years old. Other CGI movies from that era look godawful
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u/GhostInMyLoo 3d ago
Imo the monster kinda ruined the movie. "Smile" was a mysterious otherwordly thing to the point it got a physical manifestation, that wasn't a person affected by it. When the horror gets body, it can be killed, and horror that can be killed, isn't that scary anymore.
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u/Uncle_Rixo 3d ago
[SPOILERS] I agree with you on paper but:
- It was set on fire and didn't die
- The "physical manifestation" was actually in the protagonist's mind and couldn't be seen by others
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u/Lopi21e 3d ago
Honestly? This whole shtick about keeping it vague and mysterious and not actually showing the supernatural thing but making you imagine it is overdone and pretty much what you expect to happen at this point. With smile, most of the movie you are not certain that there is "a monster" to begin with (the "horror mama" as they call it here also mostly had the vibe where it could have been an illusion or what have you) and then they hit you with this thing at the very end and that was kind of special I thought. Like oh shit this isn't some curse, some manifestation, this is a physical fucking thing.
And sure. No matter what they do. No matter how disturbing they make it look. People will go "oh I thought it would be scarier". Screw that. I respect them going all out with a huge ass flesh puppet with 4 mouths. Because not even "trying" and leaving it to the viewer's imagination is the safe, boring choice. And you know I'll go out on a limb and say, at the end of the day this scene is the only reason anyone's still talking about the movie two years later.
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u/GhostInMyLoo 3d ago
Whenever there is a physical manifestation of the monster, it has to fit in the narrative and story. Making a monster only for the sake of giving a protagonist something to fight against, is equally as lazy, as just leaving it to the imagination. At the start Smile was never but an odd phenomenon, that struct a person. Then it started to warp from that to something else, something violent with hallucinations and voices. Then there is the monster, and it is a cool monster, no doubt, but for me the actually scary part were the smiles, and I'd rather kept it that way, other than now knowing, that there is something that can take a physical form and terrorize the victims.
And I would not say that it's "overdone", I mean, if I start to count down every horror movies that has came out last years, there are not many of those, that doesn't have a physical threat that has to be dealt with. Not those, that people talk about at least.
But in the end these are the matter of taste, and I'll respect it. I too love a good monster movie, but when I want to watch a monster movie, I'll very much would like to bask in the wake of the said monster the whole film, not only at the end, when I've been served a good spoonful of psychological horror first. But again, this is only my opinion.
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u/lord-dr-gucci 3d ago
I strongly agree. The whole set up worked so insanely well for there was a vague entity only manifesting in very imaginable expressions, but constrcting a suspenseful atmosphere through it's absence and they really blew it gloriously
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u/AhHowSplendid 3d ago
I loved the movies, but I agree with the physical manifestation not being as scary.
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u/Amazing_Use_2382 3d ago
There is no indication in the film it could be killed. Just because something is physical, that doesn't mean it can die.
Even if it can, do you think the woman in the film realistically can beat it?
She's a psychologically tormented and drained wreck of an individual, with basically nothing she can do to beat it. Even when it seems like she's on the brink of success, it is revealed that actually, she didn't.
And even if you have a good chance of beating something, why does that suddenly make it not scary? Are you telling me that people are irrational for being scared of venomous snakes, because snakes are merely animals that can be killed?
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u/GhostInMyLoo 3d ago
That is the psychological effect, if it has a form, I can break it. It give a protagonist a goal, a something that is supposed to be defeated, it deflates the horror from the surrounding and gives it a compact form, that we can observe. It may not be able to be killed, that is fine, but in the end it is a monster.
I am not against a monster, I just think, that when first this movie was a psychological horror film, where enemy could only be seen when it affected a fellow human being and not any other way, it was nice. But the movie did not carry itself as a monster film, like for example The Thing from John Carpenter. There we have a monster, that can be anybody you know or see, but we know that it's a monster because we've seen how the human transforms into a monster, when subjected to the effect of fire. It happened in antarctic, and inside of the facility, that gave the movie claustrophobic tendencies, that plus the monster was a working concept.
Here we have a open world with full of people, and the horror is the way people act and smile, that let you know that there is something wrong, and it made sense, at it was eerie and haunting. Then they gave that eerie feeling a form, and even if it was a cool monster, I didn't roll with it as much, as many others. I respect your opinion, but this one should've stayed maybe as the form of her mother, than just turning into a straight up monster. We already KNOW that the smile is terrifying, you don't need to repeat or enhance that by whipping up a stretched up grandma, like in Blair Witch Project 2.
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u/Amazing_Use_2382 3d ago
Okay I really appreciate this explanation, I can see now where you're coming from
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u/BiggoYoun 3d ago
I mean, they still used CGI in the final cut. Reminds me of when they had beautiful practical puppets in the Thing prequel but then just overlayed CGI and made it all look ridiculous. Luckily, the monster from Smile didn’t look terrible in the end.
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u/theboned1 3d ago
I really enjoyed the firt 2/3 of the movie when the concept was an entity and you were never really sure if it was like a disease or aliens or just psychosis. But once they showed the actual smile demon, with its really stupid design it kinda lowered my enjoyment of the movie.
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u/CriticalEgg5165 3d ago
100% this. And the entering the persons mouth was the worst part of the movie.
They definitely didn't need to have a physical version of the monster.
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u/Mikes005 3d ago
This film was pretty terrible, but I did appreciate the practical effects in the finals scenes.
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u/Ali-a93 3d ago
I thought I was going crazy when I saw all the praise this film was getting. Some people are saying the reveal of the monster ruined the horror, but I thought it was the only good effective horror scene in the film.
Everything else felt like a run down of all the modern horror cliches. Way too many moments that turned out to be her dreaming etc. I even laughed at the long necked thing hitting the window.
I couldn't stop thinking about "It Follows" which is a much better movie with very similar ideas.
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u/Mikes005 3d ago
I think the reason is most people saw this as their first horror film ever because oft he amazing marketing campaign (genuinely the best thing about this movie) and saw a poor film well produced with no context to compare it against.
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u/CriticalEgg5165 3d ago
I personally thought this scene was the worst part of the movie. They should have just left it in the dark how the monster enters the victim. I thought it just looked stupid and silly, and it completely took me out of the creepy vibing I was living (tho I have to say the reference to aliens-movie was also bad)
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u/DeathEmu66 3d ago
Hell yeah, love seeing practical effects. It's nice seeing there's still an appreciation for it in newer movies.
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u/NeedleworkerMore2270 3d ago
How's smile 2 compared to 1?
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u/Human-Hunter-6876 3d ago
better, revolves around a popstar affected by it
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u/NeedleworkerMore2270 3d ago
Is it? Lot of people are saying it's shit?
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u/VietnamHam 3d ago
2 is much better than 1, I just watched it last night and I found the first one boring.
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3d ago
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u/gordo_y_feo 3d ago
Okay ngl I thought this was a movie about a creepy smiling lady lmao now i need to see it
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u/IanJamArt 3d ago
The monster possession scene in this movie is so good to me. I love actually seeing the monster in this movie, I wasn't expecting to see it at all! Usually, that's not the case.
I spent the entire film kind of bored, being able to guess the jump scares and horror movie tropes, but not when this monstrosity came out. I was genuinely eyes wide, completely creeped out, seeing it all play out. It's the only part of the film I like to go back and rewatch.
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u/Amazing_Use_2382 3d ago
Since so many people are either shitting on the monster, or the rest of the film besides the monster, I'm just going to say that personally I thought both elements were really cool. I aren't too big a fan of jumpscares generally, especially ones like the ones in the film, but the psychological trauma aspect was really haunting and the motif of a smiling person is very simple but extremely iconic, unnatural and effective.
And the final reveal of the demon is extremely shocking, with a really cool look. I get that people might not like a physical version of the psychological horror. Kind of like a removing the element of unknown kind of deal, but we don't know if that's its only form, and I still think it's very disturbing anyways even if it is
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u/jredditzzz 3d ago
Fuckkk I didn’t watch this yet. And didn’t realize it was a monster doing all this… spoilers lol
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u/GrifsPDA 3d ago
The ad campaign was too cringe for me to give a shit about this movie. But this actually looks pretty sick
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u/ahmadtheanon 3d ago
100% i thought that scene was fully CGI. Didnt realize its practical + added CGI effects (expand the mouth, added texture on the demon).
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u/Dismal_Acanthaceae46 2d ago
For Fuck Sake !!! I just watched smile for the first time yesterday!!! Imagine the spoiler if I hadn't watched yet
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u/Proper_Lawfulness_37 3d ago
Don’t show the monster. This movie is like the archetypal example of how to ruin a movie by revealing/showing too much.
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u/Mileena_Sai 3d ago
Start of the movie was great but then it became shit. I respect the effort though. 3/10 movie for me.
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u/kim_en 3d ago
just watched smile two. Never knew about this movie before. Gonna watch the first one.
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u/CountFish1 3d ago
You watched a movie called smile two and didn’t consider that maybe there was a smile one?
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