User reviews

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 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.

The poster for "Smiley" boasts the tag-line "The New Face of Fear" and honestly I did find Smiley's appearance unsettling the first time I saw the trailer. However, all feelings even vaguely related to fear immediately began to disappear less than 3 minutes into the film (more on that in a moment). Still, I give the film one star to stand as a personal reminder for that one moment in time Smiley seemed promising.

"Smiley" is not only bad, but it's exceptionally bad to such a fundamental degree in both film-making and writing that every problem is encapsulated in the phrase: "BAD BLANK 101". Bad acting, pacing, atmosphere, dialog, characterization, direction, cinematography, editing, and sound are all astoundingly present as if "Smiley" was the meeting place for the reunion of elements in hack film-making.

As a film alone the characters are painfully flat; the acting is atrocious and the main character acts like a being from another planet; the dialog is so bad it smells; every single one of the "scares" are some of the cheapest jump scares in modern horror (that's saying something); the pacing is slower than a slug; during the long-drawn out scenes of fundamental philosophical waxing from the college professor (Roger Bart) that same slug is glued to the floor; I will not spoil anything here because the ending still remains an incomprehensible mess that started in less than 3 minutes.

Two minutes and thirty-two seconds into the film is a jump scare by a little girl that is simply a soft then LOUD noise made for no other reason than hack writing. Get used to that because those are the only kind of "scares" in the entire movie. The problems really begin as the audience and babysitter are told by the little girl about an urban legend killer, the titular Smiley, a mysterious killer (in that he's never explained, we're just expected to take the horribly shoe-horned exposition from the little girl that Smiley is a well-known urban legend, yet the audience doesn't know; Gallagher just expects us to blindly accept this). How does the little girl know this? Who is she? If Smiley is based around the NOT-Chatroulette then is it an international urban legend? All of these questions are just a few examples of what I kept asking the film which gave me nothing in return.

Then the awful writing comes into play as the audience learns of how "Smiley" is summoned beginning the long endurance test that was this movie. The Smiley killer is summoned (ala Candyman) by typing out the phrase "I did it for the lulz" three times to someone on Not- Chatroulette causing Smiley (dressed in Michael Meyers' one piece jumpsuit) to sneak up behind the person you typed the message out to then stabs them in the back (with Ghostface's knife no less). Let that sink in. The killer is summoned through Chatroulette.

Now here's a quick lesson to future horror writers and filmmakers: if you want to create a new horror icon then its important to remember that often timelessness trumps modernity. Sure, technologically based horror movies can make some of the best in the genre (Ringu, Videodrome, Kairo, Christine, Poltergeist, etc) and there's nothing wrong with being hip to the now (if done right), but the technology has to age well and be recognized as being a staple of everyday life with the majority of the public and Chatroulette has not aged well at all. In fact, Chatroulette is stale and by having the killer revolve around such an unbelievably dated concept severely hurts the potentiality for the character only speeding along its inevitable fade into obscurity.

Smiley might as well have been summoned by wearing a haunted pair of Crocs. Of course Smiley might have appeared more if the characters were wearing haunted Crocs because Smiley rarely appears in his own film. The rest of the film is just awful acting, horrible dialog, and one middle- finger of an ending.

What else is there to say? Smiley is just all-around bad in every single way possible regarding filmmaking and writing dumbing down or ripping off intriguing concepts from far superior horror films to create a poorly-stitched together amalgamation of first year philosophy, general science, and psychology. The only amusement is watching Roger Bart trying to make "I did it for the lulz" sound ominous and if you want to see that I'm sure Youtube will provide for you.

After watching the trailer and hearing about the cast i had high hopes for this movie. I was excited and couldn't wait, but who knew what kind of disappointment awaited me, after watching the first five minutes you cold clearly see that casting a bunch of untrained Youtube stars wasn't a good choice. Unfourtunally the forced tension couldn't make up for it, the script didn't deliver anything interesting and the obvious twists were pretty easy to predict. Smiley himself had like five minutes of screen time which was even more disappointing and the gore moments were just silly which made them actually hard to watch. This movie lives from the online communities it exploits to help hype the film.

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.

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 (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.

I got a lot more than I expected, the psychological ride was better than most horror movies. Actually, I wouldn't call this a horror, it is a psychological drama. At times, sure the editing made it so the acting appeared bad, but I'd say well acted. The lead actress is very good, screaming annoys me though(hard to avoid in this movie!). The YouTube actors also did quite a good job. It more of a homage to 80,90's horror movies, which I loved! Jason, Freddy, the fact no one believes the victim. I also noticed some pretty shoddy continuity in the opening kill scene, not subtle, blatant continuity conflict. Either way, I stand by my 7/10(6.5/10).

Yeah, so I watched 2012's Smiley last night.

It's a piece of crap with a stupid plot, a stupid attempt at a "twist"… and I'm sure some freakin' hipster will defend it as the direction of the new "Artcore" movement.

Just because you call a piece of crap a rose, doesn't make it a rose.

So, a girl starts college, and her partying new dorm mate invites her to a party. Once there she's introduced to "Smiley" – You get in an Internet chat room with someone, and while you are there, you type "I did it for the lulz" three times, and magically something bad happens to the person on the other side of the chat window. Not a terrible idea for a horror movie, but unfortunately, it is a terrible horror movie. I'm not even 100% sure where it went off the track, but it was one of those movies where you just end up waiting for it to end.

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 completely wrong.

I'd really hate to say it, but "Unfriended" took a lot of the concepts this movie attempts and did them far better. Using internet bullying and "trolling" as concepts for a horror movie is a stupid idea, but at least Unfriended was competent enough to make it's terrible characters seem like real people (terrible people, but real enough) and to avoid exposition about dumb internet crap nobody cares about.

Oh, and Smiley, the movie's killer? He gets about four minutes of screen time, and three of those aren't really him. I won't spoil anything but the twist pretty much invalidates the entire film and comes out of nowhere.

For some reason, Keith David makes an absolutely humiliating cameo in this and you can't help but feel sorry for him. I expected more dignity from the guy who played Coraline's cat.

If I had to use one word to describe this movie, it'd be "embarrassing." Even if you watch it alone it embarrasses you. It's a huge embarrassment for the entire cast and crew. I don't even like these guys, but nobody deserves to be a part of a piece of garbage like this.

They deserve better, and so do you. Don't watch this movie. It's insulting to your intelligence.

OK so first of all, this is a movie about stupid internet culture. Therefore it should be expected that there are going to be a LOT of stupid internet references. That said, I think they did a very good job at capturing said culture; being young-ish and working in IT, I felt like all the awkward nerds and their motivations were VERY believable. As utterly stupid as this premise and many lines of dialog (including the main "i did it for the lulz") are, that is sadly exactly how 4chan and related internet/meme/"hackivist" culture is. Anyway, this is slightly different than most teen slashers in that they seem to have gotten regular people to play the roles which makes it appear cheaper than Hollywood movies, yet it adds a gritty & quasi-realistic slant that is absent in the status quo of Hollywood beautiful people cast of stereotypes. This is by no means a fantastic movie, but I found it to be very watchable and fairly enjoyable for a low budget teen slasher. There is some really, really bad CGI (not much) and sadly the kills are generally weak / too few and far between / there isn't much gore (however there is a good twist ending which explains why the second part is as such). Overall mediocre, but this one kind of feels like Scream for a new generation - instead of the constant stupid movie references, you have internet references. I think you really have to be aware of internet culture to "understand" this movie, otherwise a lot of it won't make sense at all and it will seem very silly/stupid.

This is the WORST movie I've ever seen in my life. No, I'm not joking, this isn't one of those flavor of the month bad movies I've seen, this really is the worst movie I've seen. I literally felt brain-cells dying while watching. But how bad is it you may ask, well, just listen.

I love slasher films like scream,urban legend,i know what you did last summer... This movie was obviously cheaply made and was not striving for success, more or less it is just a purposely made thrash film. A slasher thats not scary ore gory there's Nothing!!! I do respect how hilarious and overly stupid they made characters... but from a serious stand point. Its just awfully made but it obviously was not intended to be high budget and quality... to ANY amount.

In the end, I never thought that I would rate a movie 0/10 stars. THIS MOVIE IS THE WORST FILM OF ALL TIME! DO NOT WATCH THIS! IT WILL MAKE YOU WANT TO HURT SOMEONE!

Can you say HOT MESS? I hate writing bad reviews because I think people who make horror movies are awesome, but this one was just painfully bad. The main actress was just horrible and the script was unintentionally funny due to it just being awful. It's tragic because the killer's face was really scary and the idea of being killed on the internet could have been interesting, but sadly, the story was executed poorly. I would definitely pass on this one unless you and a group of friends like to get together to watch really bad movies.

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Smiley is a low-budget horror film directed by a YouTube comedian, Michael Gallagher. (Jeeze I hope I'm spelling his name right, If I'm not I feel horrible >.<). I've been looking around at different reviews from fans and critics about this movie and am sad to say I've see a lot of harsh reviews and even just flat out hate comments. First time I saw Smiley, which was literally 10 minutes ago; so its fresh in my mind, I enjoyed it. You can defiantly tell it wasn't a high end movie, but they did very well! I liked how the director and actors knew how to get across the story they were trying to tell, being that Smiley was a serial killer of which was born by technology. There was obviously a lot of thought put behind the tale. What I wasn't so fond of was how EVERYTHIHG, was focused on the main character Ashley. There is only so far filming one person can go before it gets boring and you need to show other people and their POV's. This movie is also a good outlet to show viewers how sick and twisted people can be, and to get the viewers thinking about this for the future, so it did portray a nice message...in a horror sort of way. Overall the movie earns a 6 in my eyes for its use of horror in the mentally scary way and the small yet prominent twists and turns that followed our main characters (Ashley) every move. Congrats to Michael Gallagher for directing his first feature length film and I hope in the future he will be able to expand on this and create more and better movies that will get rave reviews!

To make this clear this is one of the worst movies I've seen recently, not that I've seen many since I try to do some research and only see the good ones through, having limited time and all. Yet this movie somehow managed to slip, I've heard it was bad, like one-sided bad but still there was this mystical force that not only made me see it but forced me to sit through all of it. So even if I tell you not to see it, I trust this same vibe to suck you in as well, it will help if you get warned though...

To make my first and, probably, greatest gripe with this movie I have to announce this - "Smiley" had three jump-scares before the actual title of the film, is there some sort of record for that? This only gets worse as jump-scares come and go and just like epilepsy, that you may get from watching this movie, it does it in spasms. Few minutes with loads of jump-scares just shoved into a ball and slapped into your face. Oh and did I mention that most of the jump-scares are fake-outs as well? That is really disappointing as I felt that the concept was actually good and from the trailer alone, I was really hyped.

After the jump-scares end, the movie just goes into the "smart" mode where it tries to tell you some sort of message but fails miserably for some reason. Sure it repeats a lot of horror titles but given their success and wide variety that can't really be helped. The message and the whole psychological mask this movie tries to sell out, completely hits the wall as you just want the movie to end and the whole "smart- jump-scare-repeat" really throws a great concept off.

The actors weren't something that shined, but most of them didn't really have anything to shine with or for as the characters are pretty much as cliché as it gets, once again a common trait in a slasher flick. The main character (I barely even remember her name really) is an exception, she is just a palette of characters slapped into one blob of randomness, if you try to drink every time her personality takes a full turn, you'll be drunk before half of the movie as she goes "geek-good girl-bad girl- tortured emo-like soul" every once in a while, it's hard to blame the actress not getting into it.

This movie also has romance...Somewhat. The romance feels forced, out of place, happens instantly and for absolutely no reason, it's just like "We're a thing one frame later" kind of thing. Some thing that people try to like in the movie is the ending, which is understanding for it's sort of a ripoff of a more classic flick with a possible sequel hint (?!). Also there was absolutely no reason for the ending and the time for it's explanation is wasted for more "smart" section instead of actual explanation.

The only thing the movie actually got right was the concept and the design of the Smiley as it really was the buying thing for me. In today's internet culture this kind of internet, urban legend movie just had to be made, I just can't help but wish it could've been made differently with psychological factor being the selling point not the cheap jump-scares. If you're ripping off movies, look at Grudge, The Eye (original) and so on instead of classic ones as over time, they've become a ripoff of themselves.

Overall this movie is awesome before it begins, after the starting point it completely fails to deliver, trying to be smart and psychological yet offering no connection with the characters or development, instead giving forced and fake jump-scares and declaring itself "horror" film. If only it was made the way it intends to it would've been so much more and given us another epic figure as Smiley deserves to share the spotlight with Freddy, Jason, Michael Myers and others...

I watched it for the LULZ I watched it for the LULZ I watched it for the LULZ.

I was hoping that Smiley would appear behind the cast members when I typed this. Unfortunately, I was as disappointed in that as I was in this movie. Honestly, I've never seen such an assorted unappealing motley of characters since the bar scene in Star Wars. The actors were so unpolished that I thought that the reel was out of sync with the sound. The Smiley character seemed as if were made from the top of a bald man's head with magic marker stenciled on. The only appealing character in the whole movie was the babysitter who was polished off at the beginning. This movie is destined to appear in the Netflix section under "if you enjoyed "Spike" you might like this. Steer clear. I know you want to see it anyway… but seriously, run.