The Monstrosity

**The Monstrosity** is the main antagonist in both the 2020 short *Laura Hasn't Slept*, where he was primarily portrayed by Lew Temple, and the 2022 American psychological horror film *Smile*. It is portrayed primarily by Marti Natulis, but throughout the film was also portrayed by Caitlin Stasey, Sarah Kapner, Robin Weigert, Gillian Zinser, Dora Kiss, Jack Sochet and Kevin Keppy respectively.

## History

### Laura Hasn't Slept

At a therapist's office, Laura Weaver explains how she has been having the same dream every time since last week. It’s just that it starts differently. In her dream, she might be at work, in her apartment, on the train, etc. Wherever she is, Laura explains how she gets this terrible nervous feeling in her stomach. She knows something is wrong, but she can’t remember what it is. Then, a man appears, and Laura explains how it is the same man in every dream. He is smiling at her, but it is not a friendly smile. Moreover, Laura mentions how there is also something the matter with the man’s eyes. She sighs as she rubs her own eyes, before proceeding to state how she has never been this scared of anything in her life, like she is with this man.

As the session continues, the therapist tasks Laura if she thinks there’s a reason why this man continues to appear to her. Laura tearfully says that this man’s motive for essentially haunting her is that he wants to show her his true face. In other words, the one he has behind the face he is currently wearing. She admits that it sounds crazy, but that ultimately, she is really scared that if she sees the man’s true face, she will die.

The therapist then asks her point blank why she is here then. To which Laura explains that she is here to put an end to these horrible nightmares that she keeps on having. However, the therapist reiterates that is not what he is really asking her, and asks her again why she is here with him.

Her therapist then asks Laura how she happened to get to this office to discuss her dreams with him. Followed by taunting her when he asks her if she still thinks he is her therapist. He doesn’t stop and continues to go on by asking Laura if they had even met before. She is initially confused until it suddenly dawns on her after he asks her if she is certain that she is not dreaming right now.

Suddenly, things get darker in the room, some cracking sounds can be heard, as the shelves full of books begin to fall. Laura breathes deeply as she stares at who she thought was her therapist.

However, said therapist’s lips begin to quiver, as he begins to smile menacingly. He taunts her by telling her how she seemed awfully tired. Laura closes her eyes, but even sitting down, the man continues to smile, even after his eyes roll to the back of his eye. Till only the white husks remains. She yells out to him to stay away from her, and it is then she notices the door to his office.

The man keeps yelling out her name from behind and starts to stand up. But the sound of what seems to be bones cracking are heard loud and clear by Laura. Despite her fears, she turns around, and the man tells her how there’s something he wants to show her. He slowly begins to pull at his face, and she turns back around. She slaps her face a couple of times as she tells herself that none of this is real.

Undeterred, the man continues to yell out to Laura to look at him. Each time he yells out her name, his voice gets lower and raspier. She doesn’t listen to him, and instead covers her eyes with her hands. Laura yells out once more that he isn’t real, and the rooms get even darker and eerily quiet. She eventually takes her hands away from her face, and looks around the room. She hears some footsteps around her. She walks around till eventually, the man pops up, showing her his true face. She wails and much like the man before her, Laura pulls at her face, causing her eyes to bleed.

### Smile

At a psychiatric ward, stressed and overworked psychiatrist Rose Cotter meets with Laura Weaver, who had several days earlier witnessed her art history professor commit suicide. Laura claims that an entity taking the form of smiling people, as well as stalking and telling her she is going to die. Not long after Laura begins screaming hysterically and has a seizure. After Rose calls for help, she sees Laura standing up and grinning. With a shard of a broken plant pot, Laura cuts open her neck, killing herself.

The entity continues to taunt Rose, which makes her seem unhinged and dangerous to people around her, including her fiancé Trevor and sister Holly. At her nephew's birthday party, Rose sees a party attendant grinning at her and curses, then falls onto a glass table, ending the party in chaos.

Upon learning Laura's professor was grinning at her before his death, Rose visits his widow Victoria and learns he was affected after witnessing a woman die by suicide. Rose asks her ex-boyfriend Joel, a police detective, to go through police records. They find several cases where someone witnessed a suicide, then a few days later committing suicide in front of someone else, who continued the pattern.

Rose visits Holly, attempting to patch things up, but only makes it worse. The entity takes the form of Holly as she leaves, terrifying her in the process. Joel then calls her after discovering all the witnesses committed suicide within a week. The exception was Robert Talley, who instead murdered someone, and the key witness to the murder continued the suicide chain. Rose and Joel visit Talley in jail, where he claims the only way to escape the curse of this entity is to kill someone in front of a witness, and do it in a brutal fashion to cause major psychological trauma, of which the entity 'feeds' off.

At home, Rose is confronted at home by the entity in Madeline's form, seemingly coming to check on how Rose is feeling and conducting a therapy session at her house. But when the real Madeline calls, the Entity reveals itself telling Rose it is "almost time". Rose impulsively drives to her hospital with a knife and hallucinates murdering Carl Renken in front of Dr. Morgan Desai to pass on the curse.

Rose eventually drives to her abandoned family home to attempt to deprive the entity of witnesses. Rose then confronts it in the form of her dead mother. Rose sets the entity on fire and leaves as the house burns down. Rose then drives to Joel's apartment and he comforts her. Suddenly, she realizes everything that happened from the moment she entered the old house was a hallucination. The entity confronts the now despairing Rose, and reveals itself as a skinless creature with mouths nested within its mouth. This overwhelms Rose, and it forces itself inside her body. Later, when Joel finds Rose by tracking her phone, a smiling Rose sets herself on fire, thus passing the curse to Joel.

## Quotes

* "You're going to die!" (to Rose Cotter)
* "Because your mind is so inviting." - The Monstrosity to Rose disguised as her mom
* You can't escape your own mind, Rose.

## Trivia

* All the creepy smiles throughout the film are entirely performance-based without any digital augmentation, as Finn smartly believed that keeping them natural would make them scarier.
	+ Parker Finn and production designer Lester Cohen took joy in planting smiles throughout the film. The camera lingers on some – like the sign at the model train shop and the pain chart at the hospital – while others are more subtle. For example, the contact photo that shows up when Trevor and Rose first text has a natural, closed-mouth smile then changes to a toothy grin when seen later in the film.
	+ After discovering that she could save herself from the curse by killing someone else, Rose returns to her apartment. The camera angle reveals a piece of mail that says “Last Chance” beside the doorway. This was an intentional bit of production design to correspond with Rose’s ultimatum.
	+ The entity that takes people over, hauntingly revealed in the film’s final moments, was lovingly referred to as Lollipop by the cast and crew. This ties into The Chordettes’s “Lollipop” playing over the end credits, creating a tonal whiplash from the downer ending.

## References

1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 ‘Smile’ – Six Things We Learned from the Blu-ray’s Commentary Track - Bloody Disgusting