A good old slasher can really put a Smiley on my face

I’ve been watching so much demented horror lately that going old skool slasher made me remember how much I love slashers. And by old skool, I now mean late 1990s slashers! Damn time is flying. Anyway, Smiley is a total throwback to the post-Scream era of Urban Legend and I Know What You Did Last Summer—with a touch of Candyman or Bloody Mary legend thrown in.

The premise is simple. If you Skype or FaceTime with someone, and type the message “I did it for the lulz” three times, freaky masked Smiley pops up and kills the bitch! Yep. It’s an internet urban legend. And it’s a goodie! After the film, I told my hubby I’m going to send him an email at work tomorrow that just says “I did it for the lulz, I did it for the lulz, I did it for the lulz.”

Smiley has it all: Creepy killer mask; faux jump scares galore; suspense and chase scenes; a bunch of asshole kids; a creepy college professor (played by the dude who gets castrated in Hostel 2); and a final girl with a bloodcurdling scream.

You won’t find buckets of blood or any sex and nudity. While there are no gay characters, one dude says he can find out anything about anybody on the internet, including their top/bottom status. Also, you’ll hear the word “retarded” a lot—I really don’t understand the reasoning behind it.

As good a slasher as Smiley is, it runs its course by the one hour mark. We are bombarded by scary dream sequences to keep the film moving through its last half hour and it starts to wear thin. My hubby even blurted out “Die already!” by about the fifth dream the final girl had.

In the end, there’s a typical unexpected twist…and then another. And quite honestly, I found them both thoroughly, predictably awesome. Smiley is definitely the kind of familiar territory that is always fun to visit.