Review of Smiley (2012) by Damien F — 02 Oct 2012

Smiley is an upcoming horror movie which I kid you not, made it way into my mail box. How my name got confuse for a projectionist is beyond me and the people who send me this do know you don't use a DVD disc to show your movie in theaters. You know an upcoming movie is bad if you could get a copy of it before its official by complete accident. Now I did want to give this movie a chance since it's getting a limited theatrical run and didn't want to ruin it for those who do want to see this, but it's not really worth your time pursuing this incredibly weak horror movie. Now I would go on record and say if you do want to see the movie avoid reading this as it does spoil the ending.

Now according to the official website which says "After learning of an urban legend in which a demented serial killer named SMILEY can be summoned through the Internet, mentally fragile Ashley must decide whether she is losing her mind or becoming Smiley's next victim" for a plot synopsis that's completely pointless with two twist at the end. These two twists really killed this movie as you see serial killer "Smiley" kill dozen of generic teenagers on screen and only two of the killings actually happened. Yes that's right, only two killing in a horror movie and only one you actually get to see. You might be wondering what the twist in this movie is, which I'm going to tell you since this is really something you don't want to spent your money on. The twist being that "Smiley" was just a prank by horrible teenagers which means I just saved you an hour and a half of a pointless and cliche horror movie. As for the teenagers, they're glad that they killed an innocent college student and thought it was hilarious that the mentally unstable young woman jumped out of a window and killed herself in a attempt to getaway from what she thought was a serial killer in a life threatening situation. Unfortunately only one of these awful teenagers gets killed at the end with a twist that proves the urban legend of Smiley is real. So in case you missed that, I just spend an hour and a half on watching a prank that killed a mentally unstable young woman instead of horror movie following the title serial killer. That's gets me angry since the horror aspect of this movie has only has one technique of trying to scare the audience with the very tiresome "jump scare" repeatedly. I kid you not the director used a "jump scare" in the first minute of the movie. That's really pathetic if you're trying to scare the audience before giving them any kind of information or establishing your setting. This becomes tiresome in the movie very fast since it's the only technique that is use to scare people and the plot is horrible. The cast themselves aren't that bad in the acting department, but most of them will get on your nerves. It's very obvious why some of these actress were cast in this (including one that tries to look like Jennifer Lawrence) and it's eye candy for the audience which is the only thing this offers. Which in all honesty, is something we don't want in a horror movie and not worth our time with a twist that makes the audience hate the characters even more than they already did.

Smiley might not be one of the worst horror movies I've seen, but with generic characters you'll hate and twists that make the entire movie pointless to watch are things that won't put a smile on anyone face. Smiley is an inaccurate title since you'll most likely be enraged by what you just watched. As for the DVD disc I receive it got run over by a train with the hopes that no one else would see it.