After dominating the box office for three straight weeks, Kevin Bacon is showing his support for Smile and his daughter Sosie Bacon's success. The younger Bacon stars in the horror movie as Dr. Rose Cotter, a psychiatrist working in a psych ward who witnesses a patient commit suicide in a bizarre and horrific fashion in front of her. Shortly after, Rose finds her life and mental stability crumbling as she realizes there may have been a dark and terrifying supernatural threat behind the patient's death that's only the latest link in a string of mysterious deaths.
Also starring Kyle Gallner, Caitlin Stasey, Jessie T. Usher, Kal Penn, and Robin Weigert, Smile debuted to generally favorable reviews from critics and audiences alike for its layered narrative and chilling visuals, while its similarities to The Ring and It Follows largely divided reviewers. One of the consistent points of praise across the film's reviews were directed towards Bacon's leading turn as Rose as she guides audiences through the terrifying narrative of a woman trying to determine if what she's encountering is a genetic mental disorder, or something far more sinister. Positive word of mouth has carried Smile to become a sleeper hit at the box office, holding the No. 1 spot for three weeks straight and having garnered just shy of $170 million against its $17 million production budget.
In a recent interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Kevin Bacon opened up about his family's recent projects in the film and TV sphere. When asked about his daughter Sosie Bacon's horror movie Smile, the iconic actor recalled her efforts to even breakout in the acting world and celebrated both her and the film's success. See Bacon's sweet celebration below:
She’s great in the movie. She’s fantastic. We didn’t know she was really interested after that in pursuing any kind of an acting career. But when she finally, in her early 20s, decided that this is what she wanted to do, she dropped out of college and moved to L.A. and really started doing all the right stuff. Pounding the pavement, doing self-tape after self-tape, and studying. When she got this part [in Smile], even knowing how hard she had worked, and knowing she was good, when I saw the movie I was just really taken aback with, not only with how great she was but also how hard that role was, because it’s one of those parts where there is no break. Usually, you start out and the character’s pretty happy for at least, you know, 15 minutes or 20 minutes before everything becomes horrible. But that’s a movie where the stress level is [insane]. I was very proud of her. In a weird kind of way, we have a horror tradition in our family. One of my earliest movies was the very first Friday the 13th.
How Smile Continues The Bacon Family's Horror Tradition
As Kevin Bacon jokes above, Sosie's role in Smile does inherently continue a tradition for her family in regard to the horror genre. One of her father's earliest roles was in the original Friday the 13th, with Bacon later returning to the genre with everything from the more comedic skewing Tremors to the cult favorites Flatliners and Stir of Echoes. Though not as frequent to appear as her husband, Sosie's mother Kyra Sedgwick has also lent her talents to the horror genre a handful of times, starring in the likes of 2012's The Possession and the dark horror-comedy Villains.
With Smile also getting a glowing review from prolific horror author Stephen King, it will be interesting to see what the future holds for both Sosie Bacon and the property itself. Given it ends on a largely open note for the evil entity driving its plot forward, many are already calling for a follow-up to continue its story, though writer/director Parker Finn's comments on a potential Smile 2 seem to point towards it not happening. With Smile now putting Sosie Bacon in the forefront of many audiences' minds, one can hope her star profile will continue to rise in the near future, be it in the horror genre, or elsewhere.
Source: THR