Smiley

If there is a God, let him kill me now, for I have seen the worst in humanity and no longer wish to be a part of it.

Director: Michael J. Gallagher
Writers: Glasgow Phillips (Screenplay and Story)
                Michael J. Gallagher (Screenplay)
                Ezra Cooperstein (Story)

There are only a certain amount of times a person can say "that's stupid" and "stop it" and "I hate this fucking movie". I hate this film because it's stupid, the rules don't make sense, the "twist" ending makes no sense, the main character is impossibly stupid and hateable, it's boring, it drags on and on and on and on and won't fucking end, it gave me a headache and committed the worst crime it could as a psychological slasher - it wasn't scary. I have a headache from internally screaming at this film, from digging my nails into my head in frustration. I can't promise a short review, or a long review or even a coherent review. Know what? I'm not even sure I can promise a review. What I can promise, is a rant. A rant I have given, in part, to the people I was talking to while watching this film. So I'm going to take a deep breath, take a painkiller and get into this shit.

Let's discuss our lovely leading lady Ashley (Caitlin Gerard). I despise this character as much as a human can, maybe more. She is an idiot. I don't mean in the sense that she's just a ditzy blonde, oh no, she's fucking gone. She has no brain cells. I'm amazed she got into college. Then again with the state of the American education system and them letting in someone who wrote #BlackLivesMatter over and over as their entry essay...it's no surprise this character was let into higher education. Fuck. Ok, so how is she an idiot? Maybe she isn't academically thick because we only see her in one class and that's a science class where it's just conversation between Mark (Toby Turner) and the professor (Roger Bart) with the occasional bit of nonsense from Ashley which somehow relates to her science class. I'm not sure how academically intelligent she is, but I know for a fact she's a total social idiot. She took one puff on weed and went about acting like she was high off her head, even going as far as to say Quote: "I think I'm high off your marijuana." She had no idea what 4Chan was, and I get that this was back in 2012 but...I knew what 4Chan was back in 2012 and I was 15, this girl is at least 18 and don't come for me saying "oh maybe she wasn't into the internet all that much" bitch neither was I and I knew it wasn't a fucking Asian dating site. Fuck off. And later in the film she's speaking to her psychiatrist and tells her she stopped taking her Lithium for Bipolar Disorder because, Quote: "It made me fat and stupid." Oh but you see, that's ok because she was monitored by her doctor and came off gradually rather than just outright stopping. What got me so angry about this is she stopped taking her medication for one of the stupidest reasons ever. Weight gain comes as a side effect of a lot of medication and if that medication works it's down to you to deal with the side effects. If your medication is making you gain a little weight then change your eating habits to work with the medication, don't fucking drop it because of a little bit of weight gain. On the flip side of that if it's uncontrollable then you should speak to a doctor about it to see if they can change the medication so you don't run into some other health issues that relate to weight gain. Common sense. I don't know whether this character was written as an idiot blonde to continue the "blonde girls are stupid and only care about their looks" stereotype or they thought their audience was so stupid they needed someone to relate to? I understand that some people may not have known what 4Chan was but you didn't need to get out that bit of information so fucking clumsily and make your character look so stupid.

Speaking of stupid, wanna know the rules for Smiley to work? It's essentially like Bloody Mary where you say her name three times and she appears except with this, you're online and type to your video chat partner "I did it for the lulz" three times. I'm gonna rip into that soon. Now, just typing "I did it for the lulz" three times won't do it. You have to really want to kill the video chat partner, and you have to picture smiley killing the person you're video chatting with or else Smiley won't show up and kill them. Got it? Simple enough right? Would be if it wasn't so fucking dumb. "I did it for the lulz"? Fuck is that? I know 2012 was the year of classic memes and Lolcats were everywhere and the letter s was always replaced with the letter z BUT was it really necessary to change the o to u? Ya made the meme worse and watching this in 2017 makes this dead meme even more dead and it really fucking hurts.

Wanna know what else fucking hurts? The fucking ending to this film. It's BS twist. I'm not gonna give spoilers because this film was already ruined by being fucking made. We see that Smiley has killed Ashley and as she hits the ground, the film cuts to the professor discussing, humanity, morality and the light and dark side of life and what keeps us from doing bad shit just because we can. I think that's meant to summarise the ideas of the film? I don't know I was just waiting for this to be fucking over. It wasn't over. There were 10 minutes left and I figured "I've come this far, might as well suffer some more." And suffer I did because it's revealed that Smiley is actually a group of people who Ashley met at the party at the beginning of the film and they all discuss what a great thing they've created and how funny it is that they've killed her and how Smiley is fake. My question is this: if Smiley is fake then how is it possible for him to appear in the opening kill if the girl didn't even know what the urban legend of Smiley was until her little sister told her about it? But then the film pulls a double twist and it turns out that the fake Smiley's are actually imitating the real supernatural entity that's real and I just don't see the fucking point in that. It's so fucking stupid. Leave it at him being real. Who even cares? Me apparently but who else cares? Also. Why the fuck were they just going after this one girl? What was the point? This question is even asked by her friend, Proxy (Melanie Papila)....what a fucking stupid name...at the end of the movie. Yeah she actually says Quote: "why were we doing this?" for Zane (Andrew James Allen) to reply to her by typing "I did it for the lulz" 3 times which brings in the reveal that Smiley is real and kills her and I swear to God...I just can't deal with this fucking stupid ass movie.

This movie is stupid.
This movie is bad.
This movie isn't scary.
This movie is an hour and a half long and fucked if it feels like that.
This movie is boring.
This movie is one of the worst things I've ever seen.
I hate this fucking movie.

I'm sorry if this doesn't make sense or is too rambly or I've gone over the same point over and over or this is just terrible but fuckkkkkkkkkkkk!!!!!!!!!!!!! I hate this fucking thing. I just had to get this out of my system. The only redemption is that a good chunk of the cast and crew went on to do better things and can look back on this as a sign that no matter what happens in their career, they could do worse. That's it for now. I'm off to shove a pen up my nose and smash my head on a desk. Peace.

This is just my opinion and if you disagree then that's great, I'm open to discussion and I'm always interested to hear how you feel about this film. This is also a critique which is considered "Fair Use" under the Copyright Act 1976. If you enjoy this film and let's be real you're not a big group but bless you regardless of your taste in cinema, then go support its creators by buying the DVD or Bluray (if it's even on Bluray).