Review: ‘Smiley Face Killers’
Morally reprehensible, incredibly dull and overall unpleasant, Smiley Face Killers is a strong contender for worst movie of the year.
Tim Hunter’s Smiley Face Killers opens with a note telling viewers that the film they are about to watch is “inspired by a true story”. While the film itself is inspired by a series of accidental drownings that took place throughout the past two decades, it is also based on a still unverified theory by retired New York City detectives Kevin Gannon and Anthony Duarte, and Dr. Lee Gilbertson, a criminal justice professor and gang expert at St. Cloud State University, that alleges that those drownings were actually murders by a serial killer due to the presence of graffiti depicting a smiley face near locations where they think the killer dumped the bodies in at least a dozen of the cases. This film, which was written by Bret Easton Ellis, attempts to expand on this theory (which is questionable at best) by crediting the deaths to a mysterious cult that targets young men, a move that can be seen as morally irresponsible to the victims and their families, especially since the movie does not make it clear that there is no solid ground for any of these claims.
Moral responsibility aside, however, Smiley Face Killers is just an awful movie all around. It centers on handsome young soccer player Jake (Ronen Rubinstein), who is unable to shake the feeling of being followed by something or someone. Jake is struggling to stay focused on both his personal and academic life, his mental state affecting both his grades and his relationships with his girlfriend Keren (Mia Serafino) and his best friend Adam (Garrett Coffey). As his stalkers soon start to zero in on him and his loved ones, Jake’s emotional well-being starts to unravel, causing terrible repercussions on his life that he may not be able to walk away from.
Shot and edited like the worst possible student film, Smiley Face Killers has absolutely no redeeming values that could allow for audiences set aside the film’s misguided plot and simply enjoy its proceedings at face value. There are no emotional character arcs, no digestible plot points that audiences can connect with. To put it simply, absolutely nothing happens. Director Hunter also isn’t able to establish any sense of tension or dread that could offset the film’s narrative shortcomings, either, making for a dull, unpleasant viewing experience that is a strong contender for worst movie of the year.
With his movie-star good looks and mega-watt smile, Ronen Rubinstein looks like he jumped off the pages of an Abercrombie catalogue. Equipped with no discernible acting talent and the charisma of a rock, however, he struggles to find any depth to his character, walking from frame to frame with no clear motive, no apparent agency and no personality traits whatsoever. In a more capable actor’s hands, Jake may have made for a more sympathetic figure, but in Rubinstein’s, he’s nothing but a blank slate with the emotional range of a plank of wood. The blame can’t entirely be placed on Rubinstein, though; from his original American Psycho novel to his Paul Schrader-directed film The Canyons, Easton Ellis has never been able to write a fully fleshed out character, nor one that resembles an actual human being. While it may have worked for him in the past, his sharp societal and political critiques perfectly offsetting his underdeveloped characters, Smiley Face Killers has absolutely nothing to say at all. All that’s left is an empty husk of a movie that has the entertainment value of watching paint dry.
Rating: 1/5
Smiley Face Killers is now on VOD and home video in the US. It will be released in the UK on December 14.