Chirphymium It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

StyleSk8r At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

Billy Ollie Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Francene Odetta It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

ThomasBleedPHD 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.

Mark Seamon-Luciani In YouTube 2011, a sea of people (myself included), became mystified and terrified after a screen-shot of a bloody smiley face started circulating the web. Seeking out the source of the clip, I found the trailer for this film on "TotallySketch" YouTube channel. My thirteen year-old self watched it with intrigue and when it ended, I wanted to watch the movie. Sadly, I never saw it...until now.Now sixteen, I have a better index of horror films like "Jaws", "The Shining", "Halloween", "Psycho", and "The Thing", so I got my hands on a copy of "Smiley" and finally watched it.Moments after watching the film, I sat and wondered three things: a) Does Michael Gallagher (the director) know what a horror movie is? b) Hasn't been on the internet more than once? And c) Has he gone to a college in his life? Following this film, I watched an interview Gallagher did just before the film's release and said he used horror classics such as "Rosemary's Baby" and "The Shining" as inspiration, which made me walk away more confused than before. The reason for this is that both films had the following three things: a) A great, unique narrative propped up with stunning and beautiful cinematography, b) Real, complex, and relatable characters brought to life by an impeccable screenplay and great director, and c) An eerie, unsettling atmosphere throughout the film and a great, memorable ending to wrap it all up."Smiley" had none of these things.Why go in threes, you ask. And to that I say, "Candyman" rip-off!Within the movie's first three minutes, we're told the Smiley killer is an urban legend who is summoned via a ChatRoulette-like site with the phrase "I did it for the Luz" typed thrice, and Smiley kills a person on the other end of the chat room. And while ludicrous- sounding enough, the premise was fine and seemed original, until right after the first ten minutes, I realized what type of film this would be.Filled to the brim--no, overflowing--with jump scares to point of predictability and humor; predictable so, that should you invite your friends to your house and should agree to watch this film, it'd make a great drinking game. With the number of jump scares I'd watch it though, the 29-32 jump scares might give you a hangover.All the characters, like the film "Not Cool", are brought to life by Internet personalities (Shane Dawson, Toby Turner, etc.) and still wonder if the director assumed that their fame on YouTube transferred into the movie world or just though each YouTuber would bring a certain number of moviegoers. I'm assuming number two, primarily because, being a MASSIVE Toby Turner fan back in the day, I would've gone to see it solely because he was in it.The main girl, Ashley (Caitlin Gerard) is who we are supposed to root for, care about, and worry for after she kills an anonymous stranger by summoning Smiley and now thinks Smiley is after her, is the most annoying character in this film; with the vocabulary and mindset of a fourteen year-old girl, anything that came out her mouth just drove me crazy and her laugh was so dreadfully painful to hear, I'd think being stung by a scorpion would be less painful.The supporting cast simply added salt to the wound; Ashley's roommate, Proxy (Melanie Papalia) represented the typical cliché character of "nothing's really happening", then coming full circle to being "now that it's going down, I'm all screaming and whining". Her "love interest", Binder (Shane Dawson) is so wooden, a coffee table could give a better performance. Perhaps the biggest quarrel I have with this film was it's ending.*DEFINITE SPOILERS FOLLOW*This film has a twist ending, much like "The Village" and it's just as illogical as the latter, but the difference being that M. Night Shyamalan had build a pretty decent amount of suspense and story in "The Village" so that made me more angry than this film that build pretty much neither.As all the college campus kids are revealed to have been pulling an elaborate prank on Ashley and all "pretended" to be Smiley, it's also brought up that they're Anonymous and 4chan hackers bent on spreading the word of Smiley.It presents not just one plot hole, but so many that if the movie were a water balloon it'd burst. To list them; a) Why would "Anonymous" set-up such an elaborate scheme to just get one annoying girl? b) How were they everywhere "murdering" anonymous people anywhere online when they're is only seven of them? c) How would the whole confrontation scene boil down so much to coincidence? And d) What was the purpose of even trying to kill her??Mind-boggling.To wrap up, this movie was pretty terrible and only watch it with a friend, just to see him squirm in annoyance like I did. The last ten minutes destroyed whatever the movie had going for it and made me completely check out. But not to say "Smiley" didn't have OK moments; the classroom scenes weren't that bad and Roger Bart and Keith David bring all they can to the table. But the table is pretty bare...All I can say is, that if the director dreams building a franchise with "Smiley", then I say the dream is dead and it's time to wake up and smell the coffee.

Andre Fernandes There was only one reason I decided to give this movie a chance, after reading the reviews already made by other users. The reason was: Shane Dawson. I was one of his subscribers on www.tube.com and I remembered that he had an horror movie, so I decided to watch it. The movie start is actually not bad. It's kind of interesting, but when the story develops it simply gets worse. The plot simply makes no sense. The acting was not terrible, but was not good too. If you are considering to watch this movie, please think twice. You might be expecting a nice movie because it has a lot of tube celebrities, but trust me. You will get disappointed.

Bill C I've seen a lot of movies, and I've seen a lot of *terrible* movies. This movie doesn't even rank as terrible. It had Roger Bart in it. That's the only high point. I wouldn't even consider this "horror" or a "thriller." I'd simply rank it as a "bargain bin movie" that nobody should ever watch unless you need something to help you fall asleep. I can't say enough bad things about this movie. I logged in specifically to tell you how bad it was. I don't usually tend to notice bad acting, so it wasn't even that, although my wife did mention the acting was bad. Whomever wrote the story or adapted it to a screenplay should NEVER write another horror piece... ever again.