Smile Star Weighs in on the Film’s Most Heartbreaking Death

A key component in the narrative of the new horror film Smile is that characters meet their demise in gruesome and unexpected ways, though one death in the film stuck with audiences in a stronger way than others. The complex nature of the narrative and its various literal and figurative themes answered some of the questions we had about the story, yet left some explanations a bit more vague. With the film having been out in theaters for two weeks, star Sosie Bacon recently weighed in on that especially upsetting death and who, or what, was responsible for it. Smile is out now in theaters.

WARNING: Spoilers below for Smile

In the film, an entity feeds on trauma, causing a possessed individual to kill themselves in front of a witness so that it can feed on the witness’ trauma, only to then start to stalk and pursue that witness. When Rose has someone kill themselves in front of her, she becomes the new host, as she begins to see things that aren’t really happening. At one point, her cat Mustache goes missing, only for the film to reveal that the cat had been killed, but in a delusional state, Rose seemingly wrapped up the dead cat to gift to her nephew at his birthday party.

According to star Bacon, she doesn’t believe that her character killed the cat.

“I was living inside of her head, so I don’t think that she did it. It would be hard for me to conceptualize thinking she would do something so awful,” Bacon confirmed to Variety. “I just don’t think she would, because she does everything she can to not hurt anybody. I have a lot of animals, so if I didn’t know where my animals were — oh, my gosh, I’d have nightmares about that.”

What makes the film itself so interesting is that, while there’s a high enough body count, the victims all took their own lives as opposed to enacting violence on others. The death of Mustache marks one of the mysterious deaths, in that if Rosie didn’t commit the act, it leaves the killer up for question. Given that director Parker Finn has confirmed he doesn’t have an interest in developing a sequel, it sounds as though we might never get an explanation for the death.

Smile is in theaters now.

What did you think of the film? Let us know in the comments below or contact Patrick Cavanaugh directly on Twitter to talk all things Star Wars and horror!