It’s his day. Not yours.
Have a happy, safe, boogeyman-free Halloween everybody!
Monthly Archives: October 2013
Catfishing
SMILEY
2012/15/92m
“Evil wears a smile.”
Director/Writer: Michael Gallagher / Writer: Glasgow Phillips / Cast: Caitlin Gerard, Melanie Papalia, Shane Dawson, Andrew James Allen, Roger Bart, Liza Weil, Keith David, Toby Turner, Michael Traynor, Jana Winternitz, Nikki Limo.
Body Count: 6
Laughter Lines: “If you believe everything you’ve told us, you need to see a psychiatrist.” / “I AM seeing a psychiatrist!”
“Over 30 million trailer views” boasts the UK DVD box. Fine, but there’s a Justin Bieber song that has had over 917 million views – does that attest to the quality of his music “music”?
Given this claim, it must be doing something right and, as the disc began a-whirlin’ in my DVD player, it looked like Smiley could “do a Mask Maker” and surprise the hell outta me by being, y’know, awesome. “But 2-and-a-half stars!” you say, “it can’t be that good?” ‘Tis a tale of woe, that be true… One that unfortunately must contain SPOILERS to convey the emotion found in this yarn.
Bloody Mary, the Candyman, Madman Marz – say their name any number of times and something bad will happen. So go the respective urban legends, why not add Smiley to that motley crew? How about because it’s all a big cheat…
So goes this cyber-myth, log into any old chatroom – preferably one with a cam-to-cam facility – and engage in chatter with a stranger. Type “I did it for the lulz” three times consecutively and Smiley will pop up their end and KILLIFY THEM!
‘Lulz’, for those grammar pedants among us, is cyber/text/Twitter slang for ‘merriment’ usually at the expense of another. Why and psycho would latch on to such poor spiel is a mystery the film refuses to investigate. Why not ‘I did it for the jollity’ or the ‘gaiety’?
Anyway, this befalls the usual teen babysitter and, in another place and time, college girl Ashley (Gerard) moves into new digs with perky roomie Proxy (Papalia), who introduces her to a group of anonymous web-pranksters and their quirky brand of humour, including the legend of Smiley, which nobody knows to be true or not.
Later, Ashley and Proxy choose to put the theory to test with a horny naked guy, who ends up getting stabbed in the chest after Ashley types the dreaded phrase in thrice. Was it real? How could it not have been if it’s a randomized chat site?
Ashley soon begins seeing Smiley everywhere. Nobody believes her kerr-ayzay story and repeatedly tell her to forget about it and not tempt fate by snooping. Her ____ teacher (Bart), fills his students’ heads with all sorts of theory regarding higher intellect and the possibility that we create our own fate yaddah yaddah. All of this influence begins driving the girl mad and, when members of the anonymous group begin dying, she tries to convince the cops of the legend (see Laughter Lines).
Eventually, Ashley decides the only way to stop Smiley is to have him summoned to her, so she gets Proxy to, over a video chat, type ‘I did it for the lulz’ and face her fate.
Didn’t this gag used to read “Aren’t you glad you didn’t turn on the light?”
But no. Smiley comes. Then more Smileys. Ashley takes a fatal dive through her window and they all unmask themselves – the anonymous web people. It was all some social experiment-cum-joke that they hoped to spread over the net.
If you’ve seen Cry_Wolf then this outcome will be totally new territory, only here it’s even more annoying because, up to this point, Smiley was a pretty good horror film, kinda like Candyman Jr: The College Years, all meta’d up with ATRL/YouTube-speak and a post-Scream 4 “I just want to be known” vibe on behalf of the horrible group of students we wish would DIE!
Naturally, the last-second twist is that the legend IS real after all, nothing anybody with half a brain wouldn’t have seen coming.
A real disappointment of a project in the end. Whatever social comment was trying to be made is ruined both by the unpleasantness of the characters and their cruelty, and then re-ruined by the stupid second-twist. Essentially it’s saying “It’s not real! The horror is made up because people are gullible! Oh no wait, it IS real now!” and then not punishing the whole lot of them.
Two stars are for production quality and some performances and quirky dialogue, another half for being interesting enough for the most part. All other stars were lost somewhere in cyberspace. Yeah, ha ha, I’m funny – must be that I did it for the lulz.
I did it for the lulz.
I did it for the lulz.
Blurb-of-interest: Keith David was in Chain Letter – another urban legend slasher flick; Nikki Limo was in Mischief Night.
TGI Friday: Move over Jason, here comes Skullface
After the joy that was rendering Hell Night in Lego – Hellego Night – it was back to the drawing board, or rather design software thingy, to create what is surely my life’s work… CAMP CRYSTAL LAKE IN LEGO.
I give you, Camp Bryckstal Lake… (PS, the blue house is loosely modelled after the main cabin from Friday 2).
The idyllic surroundings of summer camp… complete with a little pontoon out on to the lake where our skull-faced killer ‘drowned’ years earlier…
Our merry band of camp counsellors: Shelley, Lori, Dan, Alexa, Rob, and Alexa’s twin bro Chad, plus Horatio the Dog. But who’s that lurking behind the trees?
“There’s a legend ’round here… a killer buried, bot NOT DEAD!” Rob tells his naive comrades.
“But it’s just a harmless campfire story, right?”
“Whoop! Here’s to the best summer of our young, very long lives! Let’s all get drunk and have sex!”
“Is someone out there?”
“Gaaaaaaaahhhh! It was only a story!”
…and then there was one!
“Ha! Eat this Skullface!”
“This is the lake they used for Shark Night 3D as well – go to hell motherfucker!”
“We’re the only survivors, Horatio! Next year, let’s just get a summer job in a diner. I hear they’re re-opening that one in town where the murders took place.”
“Yes, that’s right – it’s all over… What’s up, boy?”
“More ghouls!? No, it can’t be! Aaaarrggghhhh!”
Start the fire
BLOODY HOMECOMING
2012/85m
“Come home to terror.”
Director: Brian C. Weed / Writer: Jake Helgren / Cast: Lexi Giovagnoli, Rae Latt, Randi Lamey, Alex Dobrenko, Taryn Cervavich, Branden Lee Roth, Elizabeth Bigger, Shaleen Cholera, Steve Earnest, Jim Tavare, Grainne McDermott, Jesse Ferraro.
Body Count: 10
Laughter Lines: “What, do you think this was all for nothing – that I’m just some psychopath lunatic!?”
It was with a considered amount of anxiety I sat down to watch Bloody Homecoming the other day. As I’ve known writer Jake Helgren for some ten years or more, I was dreading that horrible possibility I’d not enjoy it. Thus, you might ask yourself (if you do indeed use terms such as ‘thus’, ‘hitherto’ and the like), will this review by biased? Well, maybe a little.
But thank MY lucky stars I enjoyed it. If you don’t, well that’s fine, I’m alright, Jack!
Anyway, in what that wretched Prom Night remake should’ve been like, Bloody Homecoming is a genuine love letter to those contrived plottages of the early 80s, you know, the ones where everything works out perfectly for the killer. Here, a particularly unpleasant high schooler attempts to date rape a girl and is locked in a room by she and her friends. Said idiot then knocks over a candle and goes up in flames.
Three years later, the first homecoming dance since the accident is held and you just KNOW that it’s not going to go unmarked. The now-senior teens involved in the incident each receive a bizarre ‘Happy Homecoming’ note in their lockers and, throughout the course of the day, are stalked and slain by a loon dressed up as a fireman and wielding a sharpened spirit stick, which he uses to impale those deemed responsible for the burning.
In a nice turn, the almost-rape-victim isn’t made the final girl (and is, instead, the first to go); the reigns are handed over to her pluckier friend, Loren, who is a little paranoid about the notes and the disappearances of her friends as the dance nears.
Teenagers are soon being asphyxiated, slashed, and crushed to death by retracting bleachers (been waiting for someone to do that for yeeeears!) until Loren is forced to face up to a sin she didn’t know she’d committed. Admittedly, I hadn’t guessed the killer this time, which is always a plus point in a mystery slasher film, and I wasn’t let down by the unmasking. Could it be the angry father of the burned-up teen? The leering high school Principal? How about the burn victim himself, is he REALLY dead?
As no low budget horror film is perfect, Bloody Homecoming is also not without its flaws, most of which are inextricably welded to the cut-price nature of the production, but the acting also ranges from clunky to drama club in some quarters, often more obvious when one actor in a scene is fine and the other is plainly unable to capture the moment. But, and this is where the bias could be factoring in, when was anyone ever really THAT concerned about Oscar-level performances in teen body count films anyway? It’s a mildly diverting complaint at best.
Some expanded chase scenes ratchet up the tension nicely and call to mind the fleeing damsels from the original Prom Night and Sarah Michelle Gellar’s frantic escape attempts in I Know What You Did Last Summer; there’s also an echo of a great scene from My Super Psycho Sweet 16. Elsewhere, keep your eyes peeled for the corpse that blinks.
Promising stuff.
Blurbs-of-interest: Jake Helgren directed Severed Lives and Varsity Blood. the latter featuring actors Lexi Giovcannotspellitcorrectly and Jesse Ferrara.
TGI Friday: The Munchies
In the 17 years I’ve watched The New Blood a gazillion times, I NEVER noticed the J-man stood in the corner as David totters by looking for post-coital eats.
