LIFE&ARTS Smile leaves a smile on jump-scare fans' faces

SHRIYA VYASAM Mercury Staff

Paramount’s new film, “Smile,” delivers an unpredictable plot and terrifying jump scares that will make viewers feel ready for spooky season.

The film's director, Parker Finn, has made other classics such as “the Hide Behind” and “Laura Hasn’t Slept.” “Smile,” however, is his first collaboration with Paramount and has been a fan favorite since its release on Sept. 30. What sets this horror movie apart from others is the vagueness of the evil entity that preys on its victims. It is left to the audience to decide what its true nature is. Despite its plot holes, the film proves to be a gripping and thought provoking experience.

Meteorite class crashes in at UTD

“Smile” opens with a middle-aged woman on her deathbed from an overdose. Just as the audience's curiosity peaks, the film pans over to the next scene, leaving questions unanswered. This pattern of jump cuts will be repeated, as the cinematography of this film plays a major role in scratching the viewers’ brains. The story begins when PhD candidate Laura (Caitlin Stasey) is admitted to the psychiatric ward for unusual behavior, where she meets Dr. Rose Cotter (Sosie Bacon), the film’s protagonist. Stasey's convincing performance of a struggling college student leaves an impression on the viewer, as her story ends in tragedy. After witnessing the suicide of her professor, Laura is followed by a supernatural entity that precipitates a mental breakdown culminating in her own suicide. This death creates tension, as the story teases that Dr. Cotter may meet a similar fate.

At times, “Smile” is vague on plot points and prefers to focus on the atmospheric as pect of horror, leaving in its wake too many unanswered questions for comfort. Most egregious is the movie's reliance on predict able jump scares rather than gradual tension; the pattern of jump scares is formulaic to the point of boredom. This predictability was made up for by the film's brilliant cinematography, which is beyond words. Without its artful camera angles and design choices, “Smile” would have

ANDRE AVERION Distribution Manager

As one of the catalog's newest classes, Comets Love Meteorites allows students to study meteorites from around the world.

Otherwise known as GEOS 2340, this class is taught in ROC 2.203 under the tutelage of geoscience professor Bob Stern and associate professor of instruction Randy Griffin. Taught on a trial basis this semester, GEOS curriculum includes the history of our solar system, the asteroid belt and meteorites. Students can explore the unique structure and development of meteorites and the impact they have scientifically, geographically and historically.

“If you teach a course on meteorites and just make people read books about it and memorize stuff, it's terribly boring, but having samples changes everything. You can touch these [meteorites],” Stern said. “When we were telling students to go over them, find one thing to do a report on, and then they were like ‘we get to take these home? What if it's stolen, or what if we drop it?’ Like, I mean, they were really nervous because to them, it’s something that is very, very valuable. The reality is, the real value is the chance to connect students with the solar system so powerfully.”

Not only do students get to engage in lectures and presentations inside the classroom, they also get access to the Meteorite Research and Education Lab at ROC 1.213A. In this research lab, students get hands-on experience conducting specialized meteorite analytics. Using a powerful X-ray fluorescence gun (XRF), students test rock samples to see if they may be meteorites in disguise based on their mineral properties. Even students not enrolled in the class are welcome to help in the lab — with Stern's permission — or bring in their own rocks for testing.

“The students that work with this in the lab, they are doing 99% of the work,” Griffin said. “They’re helping us establish a protocol that when people bring in stuff asking, ‘is this a meteorite,’ and they go through and do all these things that you can write up a little report template. So we're very interested in what our student can do, really carrying the other leg.”

GEOS 2340 debuted this semester thanks to the collection Professor Stern received from series of donations around the world. UTD's collection hosts meteorite samples as old as the solar system that crash landed in locations as diverse as Russia, Australia, the Philippines and even our own city of Dallas.

“We have worked with the Perot Museum because they've had a really nice mineral display,” Stern said. “They got that whole fourth

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