Movie Review Corner: SMILE
Posted: Mon Oct 28, 2024 10:19 am
Hello Leaguemates! I know there has been some media controversy lately……..but I wanted to give my shot at an article that I may make regularly if allowed by the media Czar and the league. Basically I try to watch a lot of shows/movies, mostly anime if I’m being honest, and wanted to give my creative juices the chance to flow and write a review here and there about something I just watched, especially if I either really enjoyed it, or really hated it and gave up on it.
So the following is my first movie review, and just for the occasion of Halloween, I wanted to do a Spooky movie! I had been wanting to watch this one for a while and honestly just never had a good opportunity. TMI is I have 2 kids and a wife who hates spoops so rarely am I by myself in the house with the time to put on a full horror movie. Since this weekend was TAYLOR SWIFT! OMG! My wife was occupied so I had the house to myself. Insert the spoop: SMILE. This had some pretty creative marketing back in the day. They actually hired people to sit behind home plate in baseball games and just smile the entire time at the camera, which was awesome. I’m a decent spoop enthusiast and if I’m being honest most of the “highly marketed mainstream” spoops just aren’t up to par with what I would like to see. Most of the time they have cheap jump scares that you can see a mile away and the story/plot just don’t make sense most of the time. Anyway all that to jump up my wordcount and say I finally picked this one to watch as SMILE 2 recently came out and I want to see that one (mainly for Naomi Scott), so I had to watch the first one…first.
Oh and P.S If I’m allowed to keep doing these it might take me a while to find my voice, but for now this is gonna be a rambling of major thoughts about the movie in general, with not toooo much specifics, BUT there will be spoilers throughout so tread lightly if you are interested at all in the source material.
Alright Spoop Review: SMILE
Overall premise was very good. All about mental health and perception of reality. I thought they did a great job of really playing with that perception to the point where I really wasn’t 100% sure what was real and what was not throughout most of the movie, it starts early with small things but she starts having bigger and bigger hallucinations
Example: The main character goes to her nephew’s birthday party with a gift she bought earlier in the movie, and it actually shows her go into the store, buy the gift, and the store clerk puts it in a box and hands it to her. She is later seen wrapping the box and then other things happen to her at this point. So the day of the party comes and the kid chooses her present to unwrap and what you think is what she bought turns out to be something else entirely, and the MC starts to freak out but its so bizarre you really aren’t sure that its real until the scene ends and other characters are talking about what happened.
#2: Later in the movie is a completely normal scene where she is talking to someone inside her own home, nothing scary or creepy going on, until her phone rings and on the other end of the phone is the persons voice who should be in her house, and then things derail from there.
So, all in all I kind of got duped twice, one of me thinking it was fake but it was real, and one of me thinking it was real, but it was fake. So, I really appreciate a movie that can trick you not once, but twice essentially using the same trope.
Spoops were more psychological than cheap jumps which I loved. They were more grounded in reality like when she’s drinking wine in her kitchen and the house alarm goes off, not a scary spoop but still makes you jump a bit. They did have one very obvious one when she was listening to a voice recording that had a very low whisper and she gets closer and closer and turns up the volume and I was like oh yea we getting a jump here. Mostly they were just forms in the background of random people smiling at her, with a couple of ethereal forms thrown in there too, so very spoopy.
I liked how they had a whole red herring of “ok how do I fix this and not die” and she finds all these other people who had the same problem as she is currently having, and 1 person survived and she sees him and he’s like “yea I just had to kill someone else and spend my life in prison” so turns out there is no escape. Essentially she learned that this “entity” thrives of people with trauma and hinting at it throughout the movie, she’s decides she has to just go face her childhood trauma.
Brings me to my favorite part of the movie. She goes to her old childhood house, which is beaten and run down, and she’s just sitting in the house with an oil lantern and literally just like “ok I’m here, lets Fryeing go bitch” and then it was a good scene with her mom and confronting trauma and eventually the mom it turns into the thing from Barbarian (Another great spoop if you haven’t seen or heard of it) and she’s like “nuh uh bitch this is my mind” and Fryes her up, bringing it back to the whole mental health theme. Then you think she won and she leaves the house and it’s all bright and happy and she goes to another characters house and after some light conversation the entity reappears and is like “nope still here” and the Fryeing lighting changes and she runs out of this dudes apartment and SHES STILL AT THE HOUSE! . Fantastic. Then the ex boyfriend shows up and it shows how the entity gains access to the people it is haunting, which was very creepy. The people basically have a heart attack and die and it turns into its true form which is this massive skinless monster with about 8 mouths. So it invades their body and waits for the next person to show up to kill themselves in front of, basically creating trauma for someone and continuing the cycle to thrive.
Overall like a solid 9/10 would recommend. Excited for SMILE 2. Definitely didn’t expect it to be that good going into it.
P.P.S. the monster reminds me of AngryBanana because he is also ugly, and his team is bad. Boom PBSL related.
Let me know if you enjoyed because I sure did and I would love to do more if people don’t mind.
JEDIHERO.
So the following is my first movie review, and just for the occasion of Halloween, I wanted to do a Spooky movie! I had been wanting to watch this one for a while and honestly just never had a good opportunity. TMI is I have 2 kids and a wife who hates spoops so rarely am I by myself in the house with the time to put on a full horror movie. Since this weekend was TAYLOR SWIFT! OMG! My wife was occupied so I had the house to myself. Insert the spoop: SMILE. This had some pretty creative marketing back in the day. They actually hired people to sit behind home plate in baseball games and just smile the entire time at the camera, which was awesome. I’m a decent spoop enthusiast and if I’m being honest most of the “highly marketed mainstream” spoops just aren’t up to par with what I would like to see. Most of the time they have cheap jump scares that you can see a mile away and the story/plot just don’t make sense most of the time. Anyway all that to jump up my wordcount and say I finally picked this one to watch as SMILE 2 recently came out and I want to see that one (mainly for Naomi Scott), so I had to watch the first one…first.
Oh and P.S If I’m allowed to keep doing these it might take me a while to find my voice, but for now this is gonna be a rambling of major thoughts about the movie in general, with not toooo much specifics, BUT there will be spoilers throughout so tread lightly if you are interested at all in the source material.
Alright Spoop Review: SMILE
Overall premise was very good. All about mental health and perception of reality. I thought they did a great job of really playing with that perception to the point where I really wasn’t 100% sure what was real and what was not throughout most of the movie, it starts early with small things but she starts having bigger and bigger hallucinations
Example: The main character goes to her nephew’s birthday party with a gift she bought earlier in the movie, and it actually shows her go into the store, buy the gift, and the store clerk puts it in a box and hands it to her. She is later seen wrapping the box and then other things happen to her at this point. So the day of the party comes and the kid chooses her present to unwrap and what you think is what she bought turns out to be something else entirely, and the MC starts to freak out but its so bizarre you really aren’t sure that its real until the scene ends and other characters are talking about what happened.
#2: Later in the movie is a completely normal scene where she is talking to someone inside her own home, nothing scary or creepy going on, until her phone rings and on the other end of the phone is the persons voice who should be in her house, and then things derail from there.
So, all in all I kind of got duped twice, one of me thinking it was fake but it was real, and one of me thinking it was real, but it was fake. So, I really appreciate a movie that can trick you not once, but twice essentially using the same trope.
Spoops were more psychological than cheap jumps which I loved. They were more grounded in reality like when she’s drinking wine in her kitchen and the house alarm goes off, not a scary spoop but still makes you jump a bit. They did have one very obvious one when she was listening to a voice recording that had a very low whisper and she gets closer and closer and turns up the volume and I was like oh yea we getting a jump here. Mostly they were just forms in the background of random people smiling at her, with a couple of ethereal forms thrown in there too, so very spoopy.
I liked how they had a whole red herring of “ok how do I fix this and not die” and she finds all these other people who had the same problem as she is currently having, and 1 person survived and she sees him and he’s like “yea I just had to kill someone else and spend my life in prison” so turns out there is no escape. Essentially she learned that this “entity” thrives of people with trauma and hinting at it throughout the movie, she’s decides she has to just go face her childhood trauma.
Brings me to my favorite part of the movie. She goes to her old childhood house, which is beaten and run down, and she’s just sitting in the house with an oil lantern and literally just like “ok I’m here, lets Fryeing go bitch” and then it was a good scene with her mom and confronting trauma and eventually the mom it turns into the thing from Barbarian (Another great spoop if you haven’t seen or heard of it) and she’s like “nuh uh bitch this is my mind” and Fryes her up, bringing it back to the whole mental health theme. Then you think she won and she leaves the house and it’s all bright and happy and she goes to another characters house and after some light conversation the entity reappears and is like “nope still here” and the Fryeing lighting changes and she runs out of this dudes apartment and SHES STILL AT THE HOUSE! . Fantastic. Then the ex boyfriend shows up and it shows how the entity gains access to the people it is haunting, which was very creepy. The people basically have a heart attack and die and it turns into its true form which is this massive skinless monster with about 8 mouths. So it invades their body and waits for the next person to show up to kill themselves in front of, basically creating trauma for someone and continuing the cycle to thrive.
Overall like a solid 9/10 would recommend. Excited for SMILE 2. Definitely didn’t expect it to be that good going into it.
P.P.S. the monster reminds me of AngryBanana because he is also ugly, and his team is bad. Boom PBSL related.
Let me know if you enjoyed because I sure did and I would love to do more if people don’t mind.
JEDIHERO.