Charming and brutal

There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

Blistering performances.

Mostly, the movie is committed to the value of a good time.

SMILEY is yet another slasher-cum-horror flick in a world already over-saturated by the genre. Once again it's an interpretation of an urban legend storyline, a la CANDYMAN, except updated to the Internet age. Chatroom users are tasked with typing "I did it for the lulz" into their chat window three times in a row, at which point the horribly disfigured murderer Smiley will appear and knife the person they're talking to to death.It's as dumb as it sounds, and actually worse in places. Although the idea in a nutshell isn't too bad, it's the execution where this fails. There are dumb, unlikeable characters throughout, overage high school kids without an ounce of charisma between them; stupid teen-speak dialogue which appeals to the lowest common denominator every time; plus a couple of supporting roles for tired-looking actors like Keith David (THE THING) and Roger Bart (HOSTEL PART II).As is the norm for such films, the only reason to watch SMILEY is for the kill scenes, and they're pretty shoddily done with low rent gore effects and nothing much in the way of tension. Instead, the director seems intent on throwing as many false scares and pointless dream sequences into his movie as is possible, thus padding out the running time to feature length. Watch for the quadruple twist ending, probably the dumbest I've ever seen.

My sister made me watch this film. God, i regret not jumping out of the nearest window. The movie in a summary is terrible writing, acting, and plot mashed up into one. At first glance some might say "so bad its good" which i disagree this is so bad the creator should be arrested for the terrible movie he made. When i first saw the antagonist i thought to myself "that looks scary" knowing myself to be a pansy when it comes to horror films getting scared easily i thought maybe i could get a good scare at least once but found myself poking more holes in the plot then a galleon firing at a goldfish in Guns of Icarus online. The movie is so bad that I've forgotten most of the movie other then the Ashley going insane because the ring did it and that was a successful movie, and the ending which left me wanting to jump out of a window only to land on pikes. Now on to smiley, Smiley is summoned by going to omegle or chatroulette(those websites where perverts look for women, and sluts look for men)and typing "I did it for the lulz" three times which is such a stupid concept i'm pretty sure the director was high when he made it(more on smiley later). now to the actors, there is only two people who acted in this that i liked (tobuscus and Swoozie)and even i have to admit they didn't do very well the main characters are bad too Shane Dawson being one of the worst that's all i really have to say about the actors. *Ending spoiler below!*The ending by god the ending if there was any other ending like this i would burn Hollywood down myself. So ashley jumps out a window and all the smileys come out (you thought it was a monster? no it was all of her best friends dressed up as smiley) and start saying how awesome that was one mentions "i'm going to totally put that on instagram" (because i guess instagram allows dead people on it now i guess). Anyway the ending is about how anonymous(really?) did this along side the Chan websites(again really?) and why did they do this? Because they wanted to become the first viral serial killer. That's it. That's the story. So the asshole talks to his friend (who was in on it) when he says "i did it for the lulz" three times in the chat bar i guess no one expected anything to happen but yeah it turns out smiley was a real monster and kills the girl. Then roll credits. I could spend 30 minutes poking holes in the plot for JUST THE ENDING like how did the real smiley pop up only at the end when he should of been to every time they said the trigger phrase and killed the fake smiley and the people the fake smiley's killed.

First off I have to say, for a group of people with practically no movie making experience at all, this isn't half bad. This is a teen slasher, pop-culture, amateur made movie, it isn't supposed to be the greatest thing ever, it's just supposed to be fun. These guy and girls that made this movie knew going into it that it wasn't going to be a hit, they just wanted to try it out and see what happened... For the actors, producers, and director, this is a HUGE learning experience, now granted, even without experience this movie good have been better in many ways. For a low budget independent film, it's not terrible, they did get it online, on DVD, and on major movie networks on T.V, and that's pretty cool!! So for the jerks in whom are crapping all over this movie with you over critical reviews, calm down and look at the big picture...

Should anyone ask me the reason why I watched this movie, my response would be, "It was on... and it seemed interesting."This movie seemed to be some kind of cross between "Pulse," "Cry_Wolf" and "Hackers," but had none of the suspense, complexity, sincerity or, quite frankly, the depth. Jump-out-of-your-seat scares were minimal, but I'll disregard that as not all horror or slasher movies need to be scary to be good.It wasn't the acting that made the movie bad. The acting was fairly decent, but it was the script and plot that needed the most work. You could tell by the end of the movie, some of the main cast were bored to tears. And it's understandable why as there seemed to be only four scenes in the movie, just recycled and repeated. Party-scare scenes-Main Girl is going crazy-class scenes. There is absolutely very little plot and what are supposed to be scares, are pretty much just the same jump sequences over and over again. It's repetitive, and by the end, arduous.Now let's talk about the ending. The last three minutes of the movie are devoted to explaining a "Cry_Wolf"-esque practical joke... except that it's not a joke and everyone around her is just a psycho who would be better off as tertiary or background characters in "The Following." Adding insult to injury, the group is apparently a a distant branch to the hactivist group Anonymous (also making references to popularized memes from 4chan). While Anonymous and 4chan have made some fervent, rather amoral, attempts at justice, killing for the sake of creating a viral serial killer seems just a tad of a stretch. A rather insulting stretch for those of us well-versed in recent media.And now, after considering this movie all over again, my final thoughts on this movie are, "Go find a stream site that's playing 'You're Next.' It won't insult you're intelligence too much, and it's a lot more fun to watch."