Smiley Face Killers

So themes of mental health, serial killing, and religious fanaticism I guess. Acting seems borderline dull and a bit too "on the nose" as college students. And the plot maintains very little other than he seems depressed and they are psychotic. Doesn't really go anywhere or get to anything of a point. Just there, flat.

Yeh it's one of those movies where you could be on your phone the entire time and basically get the point.

You'll be disappointed. I watched this movie because Crispin had top billing. But he's shown only for a few seconds here and there, and he's wearing prosthetics, so you don't even recognize him. And with Ellis penning the script, I would have thought this would be better. Don't bother.

It got to the stage where I had to make a reference of the point at which something actually happened of any note. It's a 96 minute film and it took 64 minutes before anything remotely worth watching took place. In fact, of the entire runtime there is a sum total of around 1.5 minutes that are worth watching, and they take place in one short scene. How could anyone involved in this have sat through it and not realised how monumentally DULL it is?

And why on earth pay Crispin Glover to play a role in which he doesn't say a single word and is so heavily made-up that it could literally be anyone?

The two stars are solely for the one gory scene, as that is well done.

I really wanted to like this movie. Witn a description like "about a handsome young soccer player," I understood it was going to be a vehicle to present a half to fully naked Ronen Rubinstein. Got it, no problem, but you can do that and have an engaging storyline. This one forgot that part.

Two of my writing pet peeves were repeatedly exercised throughout this movie. The first, dialog that wanders around and takes 7 or 8 lines of exposition, when a good edit and trust in the actors could have got you there in 2 or 3. Show me someone is depressed, not have three characters tell him he's depressed. The second is when a character reflects back on some really important, life impacting thing that happened in the past, and then goes on to tell the impacted character about it. Generic example: "Remember when your arm fell off that time? You were so scared and in pain. There was blood everywhere, and we had to go to the hospital and have it stitched back on." Pretty sure they'd remember all that, and it's kinda rude to spell out the pain to a friend like that. Again, needed another edit.

Most of the rest was pretty cliche. Bloody gore for bloody gore's sake. Ended exactly the way I thought it would. And to all the gods in B movie heaven, a white panel van? Really?

Actors unchallenged by lazy writing, barely make their way through a movie that could have been edited in half, but doing it on a low budget, brings me to a 4.