What is the work?
Smile is a 2022 psychological horror film serving as the directorial debut of Parker Finn it being based on a short film of his called Laura Hasn't Slept.
Starring Sosie Bacon as Dr. Rose Cotter, a psychiatrist at a mental ward, she becomes the recent victim of a curse after witnessing the death of her patient. She is chased by some entity that takes on the form of people that she knows.
Who is it? What has it done?
The nameless demon known as the Smile Entity, is a malevolent being who feeds off trauma. It possesses its victims and makes them smile while a witness watches the vessel commit suicide graphically. It had done this several times already, raking up 19 victims with one escaping the curse by killing a person and the entity is forced to enter the witness of the murder.
Dr. Rose Cotter is tasked with handling Laura Weaver, a PhD student who had witnessed her professor kill themselves before being tormented by the Smile Entity who takes on the appearance of those that were deceased or other people that they knew. Laura ends up killing herself and the curse is passed to Rose. From there, the Smile Entity had psychologically tormented and gaslights Rose into making others think that she was having a mental breakdown. It makes Rose kill her pet cat Moustache and put the slain animal into a box that she hands her nephew leading to him becoming traumatized; it causes Rose to end her wedding intentions with her fiancée; it torments her by appearing as her abusive mother who had died from an overdose, etc. Rose had four days until she became another one of its victims.
While documenting the string of murders caused by the curse, Rose decides to return to her childhood home to confront her trauma ending with her setting the Smile Entity on fire. She returns to her former boyfriend Joel's home and asks to stay with him for a while. He agrees saying he wanted her to stay forever with him...and then smiles.
Yeah. It turns out that Rose never actually went into the house and Joel was just now pulling up. Horrified, she tries to barricade the front door to keep Joel from entering. The Smile Entity appears before her and crawls into her body to fully possess her. Joel breaks the door down to find that Rose was dosing herself in lighting fluid. With a smile on her face, Rose sets herself ablaze thus passing the curse to Joel.
Yay, another instance of a karma houdini succeeding...
Mitigating factors? Freudian Excuse?
No indications that it is the physical embodiment of trauma rather it just feeds on it to sustain itself. That being said, the Smile Entity is still very much an active, raving sadist who chooses to have its vessels commit suicide in the most gruesome of ways like self-immolation; using shards of a broken cup to severe the jugular; eye gouging, etc.
Heinous standard
Sole antagonist with about 19 supernaturally-forced kills to its name. Along with psychological torture and gaslighting.