Smile

"Take lots of pictures of your friends, what is a great moment if you can't prove that you had it?" A group of friends on vacation lose their camera. They meet a nice dealer (Assante) who give them a great deal on an old Polaroid camera. After the friends begin to wind up dead they wonder if the camera is the cause. I will start by saying that this was better then I expected. That said this is also nothing that hasn't been done before. Group of kids...evil guy...group gets killed off...yada yada yada. Much like a "Final Destination" type movie where you know who will die next and you just wait for it to happen. The best part of the movie hands down is the last 2 minutes, an average movie with a sweet ending. Overall, this plot has been done 1,000 times, but this time a camera is involved. This version is not that bad though. I give it a B-.

Would I watch again? - Not this one, but next month I'm sure another version will some out.

Recently I have been back to my hometown in Italy for a short vacation and just yesterday I decided to hit the cinema to watch this Italian production called "Smile", looking forward for some healthy summer thrills over my back (moreover yesterday I was the only spectator in the dark room to watch it so it could be really creepy!)

As an hardcore horror fan, I'm always hopeful to see the "reborn" of Italian horror considering that in the past several of our directors delivered to the world nice pieces of horror and, though I was not particularly amazed by Smile trailer, I decided to give it a chance.

The chance started to break down after the first 10-15 minutes and the situation worsened until the end of the movie. How to describe "Smile"? I would say it's a mixture of poor ideas (most of them already seen in other movies with a much better production), stupid dialogs and situations, even poorer "special effects" (if there are any...) and silly acting (sometimes I have the feeling the actors don't believe that much in what they are doing).

Anything to save? A few. The location, shot in Morocco, was potentially good and attractive, plus the actor Armand Assante was the only one who, with his few seconds presence, gave to this movie a bit of "horror feeling".

I give to this movie 2 instead of 1 because I appreciate the effort that, anyway, has been done to create a horror genre made in Italy but unfortunately there is still a lot of hard work to do to guarantee the audience with a more satisfying vision.

Hmm, not great at all. The acting is not all that good and the story itself is not motivated enough. Too many unanswered questions. Quite forgettable, actually. There are way too many other good movies out there to sit through this.

Really cheap movie, so cheap the voices appear to be dubbed by people who have the physically inability to create any emotion in their voices. Although the actors appear to have the physical inability to act or create any kind of facial expression. Soi guess it doesn't matter.

Pros: The plot had a purpose. It was mysterious and revealed itself at a good pace. The payoff was pretty good too.

Cons (numerous): Why do writers think that annoying characters make the story more compelling, especially when their annoyance is due to stupid behavior. This isn't really a spoiler, but the group is in a very remote town far from home and packing up for the next destination when one is missing. The pissed off character who knows the other one got on a train for home says, "I don't know where she is, how should I know". Does this idiot realize none of them are going anywhere until the other person is accounted for? That is the most idiotic reaction with zero upside. If he would have held out not telling the others, like the childish infant he was acting like, they'd be stuck in that town for weeks looking for her. That isn't compelling writing for an emotional character, that's dumb. Also, early on, some of the characters are so annoyed with each other I was thinking why would this group that apparently hates each other plan a vacation together? If they would have smoothed out the rough edges (idiotic ones) it could have been a satisfying low-budget movie.