In the Smile Place

The man is at his childhood home. Everything still looks like how it was decades ago. Everything is faded, however. He closes his eyes and imagines him at twelve, playing with his friends. His mother is dead, now, and his brother is missing. A week ago, out of the blue, at work, the man is called by his brother’s employer to tell him that his brother is gone, as he was listed as an emergency contact. They haven’t spoken in fifteen years. The man thinks about the Smile Place.

Inside the house, the man sits down on the couch with a beer and wonders what to do. He finds a cardboard box under the coffee table, with tapes in it. He thinks about how his brother loved filming videos. With a VHS player he finds elsewhere in the house, he puts a tape in it. In the tape, the brother, as a kid, heads into the abandoned Providence Mall, which he isn’t allowed to go into, and explores it. He passes by an arcade, as well as a carousel, and finds a movie theater. Inside, he catches, on camera, the man and his girlfriend having sex. The girlfriend cries out loud, and the man angrily pushes his brother out and seizes his camera. The brother then runs away, and with his camera back, asks himself why his brother doesn’t like him. The man, watching it now, has tears in his eyes. He watches as, on television, his brother enters the Smile Place, after which static comes, followed by screams. Later, the man asks his brother why he’s yelling. The brother says there’s someone in the Smile Place. He gets slapped. The brother looks changed.

Now, the man thinks about how, after the Smile Place, his brother came withdrawn. It’s dark outside, but the man sees that a new scene has appeared on the tape. His brother is in a doctor’s office, struggling to tell him about the Smile Place. There, he says that he saw the Long Man. Immediately, the man regrets not being good to his brother and causing him to go in there. On screen, the brother explains that the Long Man made him smile. The doctor believes him and asks him how he left. The brother subtly mouths that he didn’t leave.

The man heads to Providence Mall, still abandoned by the government. He heads inside, hoping to find his brother. He wishes he was closer to his brother back then, but he only dismissed him as a weirdo. He heads inside and trudges through lots of trash in order to find the same carousel. He then sees the Smile Place and heads inside, calling out for his brother. With his flashlight, he sees that it’s a daycare of sorts. Figuring nothing is there, he turns around to leave, but the carousel’s horses have blocked his path. He then turns around at the sound of a voice and hears the Long Man, much taller than him, with a face of shadows. The man asks where his brother is. The Long Man says that he wanted his brother gone and was selfish, which makes the man cry. He apologizes. Soon, his face is on the body of another, and he is riding the carousel with the Long Man. He wishes he could apologize to his brother.

A security guard looks at the camera footage of that night, activated by motion sensors. He sees a boy, with the body of an inflatable tube man, running through the night.