Smiley (2012)

Smiley (2012)

1/2 (out of 4)

I ignored the incredibly negative reviews of this film and flopped down my $13.50 and was lucky enough to get a private screening as no one else showed up. The "story" is about a serial killer named Smiley who appears through chat rooms in Internets. Basically if one person says a quote three times then the other person will be killed by Smiley. The mentally troubled Ashley (Caitlin Gerard) shows up at college and gets involved with the maniac. SMILEY is a really, really, really bad horror movie and perhaps one of the dumbest that I've ever seen. I'll admit that the first fake scare caught me off guard but everything that followed this five-minute prologue was just downright horrid. The biggest problem is without question the awful story that just never makes any sense no matter how much logic you try to put behind it. The entire film just has you sitting there wondering what dumb turn in going to come next and I guess I should at least give the filmmakers credit because just when you thought things couldn't get any dumber they actually did. Another major problem is that the characters in this film are among the most annoying in horror history. The roommate is just so lame and stupid that you'll be pulling out your hair. The "friends" just say one dumb thing after another and none of the conversations in this thing are believable. Even the death scenes are very tame and pathetic and I'll add that there are no scares, no tension and nothing else for that matter. I thought Gerard was cute and good in the role but her character was so poorly written that I hope to see her again in something better. Keith David shows up in a quick cameo and this here at least put a smile on my face. The majority of the supporting performances are...you guessed it, horrible. SMILEY is really a pathetic little film and of course you've got to have the twist ending. I won't ruin it for anyone but it did cause me to deduct a half star. SMILEY is certainly one of the most aggravating horror films to come around in a while and quite worthless all around.

Fmovies: The premise of this film had potential to be a really good enjoyable slasher but it failed. Low budget doesn't always mean a bad film but think it does here. Caitlin Gerard as Ashley is appalling in this. The rest of the cast is better but not by much. Still watched it. It was OK to pass the time. Needs more gore to be a slasher horror or needs more psychological twists to be effective. I can watch many different types of horrors and whether they cost 10 dollars or 10 million dollars to make, usually I find something enjoyable about my favourite genre. Not this time. I got bored. And Ashley screaming just made me want to vomit. I think even if the acting was slightly more convincing it would be a better watch. Alas it isn't so.

There are movies out there like "Savage Weekend" and "Fat Crazy Ethel II" that are worse to sit through than this movie, but those have such low production quality they can't even be called actual movies. Smiley, however, is an actual movie, and by that standard, it's easily the worst slasher movie ever made. It's also the worst horror movie ever made. In fact, I even consider it one of the ten worst movies of all time.

Smiley is a movie made by and starring a bunch of internet celebrities I'm only vaguely aware of. A self-indulgent passion project, this movie was created purely to kick start all of their film careers.

Smiley is part of a depressingly skyrocketing trend of "Social Media"-themed horror movies. Other entries in this sub genre include the abominable "Megan is Missing" and "Unfriended." A movie that is easily the best of the three, but is still a 4/10 film.

Smiley revolves around a boring, lifeless protagonist I can't even remember the name of as she finds herself caught up in the seedy underground world of "Trolling." Here, evil internet trolls go to "The Bee board on Four-Chan" and "hack severs to post CP" and other inane nonsense. I'm not kidding, the dialogue is really like that.

This movie relies very heavily on internet references, and the creators saw it fit to have characters explain what all of the terminology and lingo means in really blunt, obvious, patronizing expository dialogue. So if you ever wanted to know what "Anonymous" and "Lulz" are, now you can! Of course you don't actually exist because no one with a proper amount of chromosomes cares about any of this.

Of course, being a movie about the evils of 4chan, Smiley puts a lot of stock into the phrase "I did it for the Lulz!" being haunting. Since the movie uses it over and over and over again. In fact one of the characters even gets a long-winded speech out of nowhere about how it represents nihilism and sociopathy and how it's extremely terrifying as the camera closes up on his pudgy face and smug grin with cinematography and lighting so cartoonish it feels like he's about to morph into a lizard or something.

But "I did it for the lulz" is not scary. It's not haunting. It's not even unintentionally comedic. It's stupid. It's a stupid phrase with bad grammar and a made up word. It's the type of thing that can only work on the internet ten years ago. It's like trying to make "lol" sound scary. It just isn't, and no amount of spooky low-voiced monologues or turning down the lights will ever make it scary.

It's hard to talk about this movie with using the word "cringe" a lot. It's the best way to describe the way you'll react to most of the dialogue and plot points: cringe. It doesn't matter if you know about "internet culture" or not. Whether you're a tech-savvy teenager or an old grandma, you'll be sighing, groaning, and cringing your way through this film until it's merciful credit sequence.

It's impossible to care about any of the characters. The ones that aren't complete blank slates or soulless exposition machines are extremely ridiculous strawmen with lines so over-the-top they should be saying them while tying girls to train tracks. This movie attempts to tackle the casual nihilism of internet communities and gets everything complete

Smiley fmovies. The nerd Ashley (Caitlin Gerard) moves to the apartment of Proxy (Melanie Papalia) near the campus of her college. On the arrival, Proxy invites Ashley to smoke pot and to go to a party, where she meets students with nicknames. Further she learns about an urban legend of the serial-killer Smiley, who comes through the Internet and kills persons that write three times "I did it for the lulz". Soon Ashley witnesses a murder in her monitor and that event triggers paranoia in Ashley that is bipolar. She believes that Smiley is hunting her down but nobody believes in her. Is Ashley mentally disturbed?

"Smiley" is an awfully ridiculous slasher with an absurd plot, bad acting and stupid dialogs. Ashley is a nerd, but her lines are among the worst I have ever seen. She repeats like a moronic child that "now she can do because she is in college" and she smokes grass and drinks boozes despite of her treatment for the psychological problem. The plot is so unbelievable that irritates. I hope that the last scene in the very end does not mean a hook for a sequel. My vote is two.

Title (Brazil): "A Face da Morte" ("The Face of the Death")

The concept of this film is a joke. Jason Voorhees killed because of the carelessness of his camp counselors letting him drown, Michael Myers killed because of his repressed childhood and the psychological effects it had on him, and these douchebags killed... to be the first "viral killer"... Did they even read these ideas out loud!?! How could they not realize how stupid this was?

Giving this movie 1 star is an insult to all 1 star movies, this movie deserves maybe just maybe 1/1000th of a bronze star... at very best!

The acting is atrocious too, there's a reason Shane Dawson never made it any further than youtube, because he's a horrible actor! The characters aren't memorable, it's flawed in MANY ways, and I'd go on but unfortunately I'm limited to 1000 words so that is all for IMDb, now for a rant to put up on youtube.

Smiley tells the tale of a city full of the most stupid people in America. There seems to be an internet-based killer slaying many people there, and we can only wish him/ her continued success. So bad is this movie--there really is no "plot"--with its bad acting, bad scripting, and not-very-scary killer at work, the viewer prays for a short viewing time.

With little gore, scares, sex or even action, this is a B movie wanna-be, so if that's what you're looking for, forget it! The only clever thing about this movie is the idea of a killer wearing a twisted smiley-face hood. After you've seen that on the ad for the movie, it's all down hill from there. Its silly "surprise" ending does nothing to compensate the viewer for the previous 85 minutes of boredom. Do yourself a favor and don't watch this movie.