Smile: parents' guide
Best for ages 17 and up. Rated R for strong violent content and grisly images, and language.
A relentless supernatural horror film for older teens and adults, built entirely around suicide. A psychiatrist watches a patient kill herself, then starts seeing smiling figures and learns a curse has passed to her. Several suicides are shown on screen in gory detail, including a throat slashed with a shard of pottery, and crime-scene photos show more. A childhood flashback shows the heroine with her mother, who died of an overdose, her cat turns up dead in a child's birthday gift, and there are about 50 f-words. We suggest 17, and caution for anyone affected by suicide.
What's in it
Violence
StrongGraphic on-screen suicides: a woman slices her face and throat with a pottery shard, and surveillance footage shows a man killing himself with garden shears. Photos show other suicides, plus stabbings, a burning figure, and faces peeled back to the muscle.
Language
StrongPlugged In counted about 50 f-words and 10 s-words (Movieguide's tally was lower, about 35 f-words), plus "damn," "hell" and more than a dozen misuses of God's or Jesus' name.
Sex and nudity
MildNo sex. The heroine kisses her fiance, is seen in her bra, and showers with her back to the camera. Another woman appears in a shirt and underwear.
Drinking, drugs and smoking
ModerateThe heroine gulps wine to steady her nerves and tries to get antipsychotic medication. A flashback involves her mother's fatal pill overdose, and one room is littered with wine bottles, cigarettes and pills.
Scary or intense scenes
StrongSustained dread with a dozen or so jump scares, grinning figures that appear everywhere, hallucinations, a monstrous demon in the finale, and constant reminders that the curse ends in suicide within a week.
Sensitive topics
- Suicide
- Self-harm
- Death of a parent
- Overdose
- Animal death
Worth talking about
The curse works as a metaphor for untreated trauma passing from person to person. Talk about why getting help and being believed matter, and make sure teens know the 988 crisis line exists.
On our lists
Similar picks around 17+
Checked October 13th, 2026 against Plugged In, Common Sense Media, the-numbers.com, Wikipedia, movieguide.org. The age is our judgment, not an official rating, and every family draws its lines differently: read the notes, not just the number. Spotted something we missed? Tell us. How we rate.