The film stars Sosie Bacon as Dr. Rose Cotter who, after witnessing a bizarre, traumatic incident involving a patient, starts experiencing frightening occurrences that she can’t explain. As an overwhelming terror begins taking over her life, Rose must confront her troubling past in order to survive and escape her horrifying new reality.

For in-depth thoughts on Smile, please see my colleague Dom Fisher’s review from its original theatrical release here.

Video Quality

The 4K UHD Blu-Ray of Smile offers a tremendous presentation, but the lack of an accompanying Blu-Ray makes it difficult to judge the level of improvement over the Blu-Ray. The highlights in the film are crisply defined with whites pure and balanced with no instances of blooming to be found. Elements in the various unique interiors are more vivid and finely delineated. The black levels are especially strong in this presentation, staying deep and inky with great detail even in the harshest shadow.

Skin tones appear natural with healthy doses of crisp detail apparent, most prominently when characters have scrapes and blood covering them. The increased range of the color spectrum is quite a sight to behold. The Dolby Vision enriches the colors to out of this world proportions when it comes to vibrancy and accuracy. The daytime portions of the narrative with the natural world pop off the screen even with an overcast grade applied. This 4K UHD presentation really delivers on all fronts including strong showings in clarity and color. Paramount has delivered another top notch transfer on this latest 4K release.

Audio Quality

This 4K UHD Blu-Ray release boasts a Dolby Atmos presentation that makes itself known. This is a film that has intricately constructed its sound design, and this disc executes everything perfectly. When the film gets kinetic, this disc brings these terrifying moments right into your living room with a depth and clarity of sound that is staggering. Every minor bump in the darkness is given the appropriate weight to put you on edge. Each sound is precisely placed with perfect spatial awareness. Environmental sounds flow out of your side and rear speakers with purpose.

The track engages all of the channels with panning effects and sounds of the haunting entity that really make you feel like you might be next on the victim list. The height channels rarely carry the main thrust of the weight, but they support the scenes by making things feel more immersive. There is a formidable amount of activity in the low end which will keep you on edge when it comes time for things to hit the fan. Dialogue comes through clearly without getting overwhelmed by the score or any sound effects. Paramount does some great work with this audio track, so those with a good surround sound setup should have fun with this one.

Special Features

Audio Commentary: Director Parker Finn provides a very informative commentary track in which he discusses the thematic ideas behind the story, the motivation behind certain shots and narrative choices, the casting of the characters, trying to get certain shots to a level that they would not trigger seizures, how they pulled off certain thrills and more.

Something’s Wrong With Rose – Making Smile: A 29-minute featurette in which the cast and creative team discuss the origins from the original short film, coming in as a first time feature director, the intensity of the lead performance, the aesthetic of the film, the underlying themes and more.

Flies On The Wall – Inside The Score: A nine-minute piece which takes a look at the creation of the unique score for the film.

Deleted Scenes: Two unused scenes totaling 12 minutes are provided here in which Rose attends a work event for Trevor and in which Rose has a deeper interaction with Joel. There is optional commentary from Finn in which he discusses why these moments are not present in the film.

Laura Hasn’t Slept – Original Short With Introduction By Director Parker Finn: An 11-minute short film is provided here which stars Caitlin Stasey (from Smile) which inspired the full-length feature. This has elements you will recognize from Smile, but it stands as a different effective experience.

Final Thoughts

Smile is a pretty strong horror film which has a memorable hook which easily gets audiences on board for the ride. The film is effective when exploring its themes of trauma, but genuine terror is not as prevalent for those who indulge in a lot from the genre. The film easily could have lost 20 minutes and been a more effective experience. Nevertheless, it is a fun effort especially compared to a lot of what we get from major studios. Paramount Home Entertainment has released a 4K UHD Blu-Ray that sports a fantastic A/V presentation and a decent selection of supplemental features. If you do not get overtaken by the hype, you should enjoy your time with this one. Recommended

Smile will be available to purchase on 4K UHD Blu-Ray, Blu-Ray and DVD on December 13, 2022. It is currently available to purchase on Digital.

Note: Images presented in this review are not reflective of the image quality of the 4K UHD Blu-Ray.

Disclaimer: Paramount Home Entertainment has supplied a copy of this disc free of charge for review purposes. All opinions in this review are the honest reactions of the author.