Brace Yourself: Horror Phenomenon Smile Is Now Streaming
Paramount Pictures’ surprise smash hit turns trauma into a flesh-and-blood menace—and it’s devouring the box office.
Valentine's Day can keep its candy hearts. If you want something meaner and a lot more fun, one of the best horror movies of the last few years is about to hit streaming: Parker Finn's breakout nightmare Smile lands on Hulu February 16.
Yes, the one that made you side-eye friendly grins
Smile isn’t just jump scares and creepy faces (though it serves both). It digs into how fear feeds on old wounds and refuses to leave. It lingers. The setup is brutally simple: Rose Cotter, a therapist, meets a new patient, Laura, who swears something is stalking her that only she can see. Moments later, Laura locks on an unnatural grin and takes her own life in front of Rose. From there, Rose starts seeing the same dead-eyed smiles everywhere, and the visions pry open memories she has spent years trying to bury. Her mother abused substances, hurt her, and died when Rose was a kid; now that buried trauma has a face. And it smiles.
How a 11-minute short turned into a studio juggernaut
Before any of this, Finn made an 11-minute short called Laura Hasn't Slept. It premiered at SXSW and found an audience online, which got a studio interested in giving him a feature-length shot. Budget: about $17 million. Modest for a studio debut, and initially meant to drop straight to the studio's in-house streamer. Then the movie started slaying at festivals and in test screenings. Plans changed. Theatrical it is.
And then the marketing hit. Remember the people planted at baseball games, staring into the camera with a grin that said 'run'? That odd little stunt worked. The movie opened above projections and kept surprising from there, becoming the pandemic era's top-grossing R-rated horror release and clearing $200 million worldwide — over $217 million, to be exact. That is the kind of return studios write on a whiteboard and circle three times.
What came next
The studio quickly locked in a sequel, and Smile 2 arrived in 2024. It pulled in a little over half of the first film's haul, still a strong showing for a lean-budget follow-up, and a chunk of critics even preferred it. The universe is expanding beyond movies too, with a comic book on the way and a third film in development.
Why this is a perfect mid-February watch
- Smile starts streaming on Hulu February 16.
- The film's a 2022 feature debut from Parker Finn, spun out of his short Laura Hasn't Slept.
- Budget was reported around $17 million; worldwide box office topped $217 million after a theatrical pivot.
- The viral campaign — those unnerving grinners at televised baseball games — actually moved the needle.
- Sequel Smile 2 (2024) earned a bit more than half the original's gross; more stories are coming via a comic and a third film.
- If you're building a horror queue on Hulu, this joins heavy hitters like Barbarian and Longlegs.
Bottom line: if you missed it in theaters or just want to test your nerves again, cue up the original. It’s sharp, nasty in the right ways, and has one image that will make you distrust every cheerful face in your life for a week.