Film director Parker Finn left Bath after Revere High School to attend college at the University of Colorado in Boulder. That doesn’t mean that the sleepy bedroom community didn’t leave its impression on the 35-year-old filmmaker whose debut feature film, “Smile,” opens nationwide Friday.

“Smile” is an old-school horror film, meaning that there is less reliance on violence and more emphasis on messing with the viewer’s mind. Finn’s appreciation for movies began at an early age.

He inhabited video stores like Flix or Blockbuster just to check out the box art on Friday nights. Scanning DVD covers was the norm before walking out with whatever film struck his fancy back then. It was even better if the store popped and sold its own popcorn — like Flix.

Finn admits it’s something he still misses. It also helped to plant the seed for his future interest.

“I think I was such a movie kid. I was movie-obsessed. I was also book-obsessed. And I had a father who was a cinephile — and horror was one of my first loves,” he said during a Zoom interview Tuesday. “But I don't know. I think as a kid, I was especially frightened by horror. And at some point, that turned into an attraction and an obsession with seeing what was the next big scary thing I could watch. And here we are. You never know what gets twisted up in your head as a kid.”

At least one horror master with local connections got twisted up in his head.

“Wes Craven was a master at what he did. The first time I saw ‘Nightmare on Elm Street,’ I don't think I slept for a week,” he said. “That movie scared me so badly as a kid, but I love it. I love what he was able to do, that urban legend simplicity of that story. But all of his films are very, very good.

Craven was just a kid from Cleveland who wrote and directed at least two classics in the genre, the aforementioned “Elm Street” and “Scream,” which rescued the slasher film from horror cliches.

Craven isn’t the only influence Finn mentions.

“John Carpenter is somebody that I got exposed to at a young age, that I think that he really, really shaped modern horror cinema,” he said.

Carpenter's movies include “Halloween,” “The Fog,” “The Thing” and “Escape from New York.”

“One of the strongest cinema memories I have was the first time I watched Stanley Kubrick's ‘The Shining,’ just the way some of the images and performances and atmosphere of that film just burned themselves into my brain and have just never left. And it's one of my favorite films. I revisit it all the time.”

Elements of all of those filmmakers are present in “Smile,” a film that explores personal trauma (Craven’s “Nightmare on Elm Street”) through the prism of the supernatural (Kubrick’s “The Shining”) and, perhaps, monsters (Carpenter’s “The Thing”).

“Smile” is tense, taut and delivers genuine scares and creepiness. It’s a film based on a 10-minute short that Finn made in 2020 called “Laura Hasn’t Slept.” He calls that short the spiritual cousin to “Smile.” It concentrated less on gore and more on the supernatural aspects of horror, which is in the DNA of “Smile.”

“I really wanted to investigate all the stuff that I think we carry around inside of our heads, our traumas, our fears, our anxieties, our guilt, and then pair that with this feeling of what it might be like to have your mind turning against you,” Finn said.

“And I want to take something that was really deeply psychological and internal and ground it as a story with a character,” he said, “and then introduce this extraordinary external, potentially supernatural threat that's coming and braid those two things together and be until they became indistinguishable from one another.”

“Smile” has been getting positive reviews since premiering at Fantastic Fest in Austin, Texas, on Sept. 22 and will receive a wide release (approximately 3,600 screens). With its only other competition this weekend being the comedy “Bros,” it could end the weekend as the No. 1 film in the country.

That is a huge leap — short film to feature film success — for a director. For Finn, it’s a long time coming after toiling away since his days at the University of Colorado. His “overnight” success could finally arrive after more than a decade. That good fortune coming now, after so many years, feels “surreal,” he said.

“You spend a very long time screaming into the void, just hoping somebody will listen, making shorts, writing scripts, all of these things all along,” he said. “And that you face so much rejection along the way. And then the opportunity to make this film came along, and I desperately was trying to make something that I could infuse myself into that hopefully audiences would embrace.”

As of Thursday, “Smile” had an aggregate score of better than 80 on the website Rottentomatoes.com and more than 70 on Metacritic.com, so the film is being appreciated by critics. Of course, critics (in the interest of disclosure my reviews are part of the Rottentomatoes.com aggregate score) matter less than audiences. Feedback he’s received from that segment has been positive, he said.

“But you never know,” he admits. “And when you see people react to the film in the way that you're hoping, it really makes that enormous marathon of work all worth it. It's the reason I wanted to do it. And the whole thing has been very dreamlike and pinch-me moments.”

As for why it’s all coming together for him after all this time, Finn has no clue.

“But I think it's that sometimes I think you just have the right story at the right moment that hits in the right way. And it's hard to question fate and kismet and all that kind of stuff,” he said. “So, I'm just going to be thankful and humble that this has happened and not question it too much.”

He will allow himself to think about the future just a wee bit, however, and how, to some extent, he wants his career to evolve with respect to the types of films he wants to work on in the future.

“I want to continue to challenge myself and do all kinds of different things. For me, I'm always drawn to stories that have a sense of anxiety fuel to them, something stressful, nervous making,” he said.

“So I think that horror or horror adjacent, I think the projects that I'm going to want to pursue all have something about them that'll make your palms sweat.”

George M. Thomas dabbles in movies and television for the Beacon Journal. Reach him at gthomas@thebeaconjournal.com. Follow him on Twitter @ByGeorgeThomas