I confess I'm intrigued by the Smiley Face killer theory and have listened to a bunch of podcasts about it. The movie doesn't look very true to the true cases I've heard about but I'll still check this out.
Same, I find the conspiracies surrounding these murders fascinating. I personally love this video on the subject.
I love Tim Hunter. Some great and underrated flicks, like Paint in Black which I hope gets a serious upgrade to HD at some point. I am a big BEE fan too, and this already looks better than The Canyons to me.
So I'd never heard of the smiley face killer story before this thread was created and since then I've done some research and found it quite intreaging. It certainly peaked my interest in this movie. Well I watched the movie tonight and I'm sad to say it was awful. Man it's so boring with these zero interest characters bumbling along not doing anything in particular for about 45 mins before anything really starts to happen. The killers appears to have some kind of time machine the way they seem to appear and disappear and be behind a character one second but then be infront the next when there's no logical way they could get past in the time and without being detected. We get a little bit if gore then the movie limps to its conclusion, not fleshing out any of the characters before this point. It was a real struggle to get to the end, so I have to advise all to give it a miss, it's really not worth your time.
12.96 for dvd and bluray is 14.96 should be in Walmart stores. Might just get the dvd big fan of Crispin glover in Willard and Friday the 13th final chapter.
Got the dvd employees were looking for it for another customer when I got to Walmart. Also got possessor all they had was rated versions of both dvd and bluray.
Im about halfway in. So far pretty awful. Was hoping for some upside down genre tropes as this has a male in the final girl place, but not even that. Characters that are wooden and apathetic even to each other, a catchall trope of medication issues, characters that seem to be living in unoccupied houses without the luxury of interior lightbulbs (you go into your place at the ass end of sunset you use a lightswitch) and a supposedly decompensating lead character who is in college and appears to still hit the gym and nair his body and plus also has his bed made, his clothes hanging up, and a bathtub that is spotless and without an Axe product, so I guess it is more of a fantasy film. Um yeah, Im guessing when he really goes bonkers he dusts n vacuums til he has 8 pack abs. Plus a girlfriend that is concerned for his mental issues, but hey lets roll some E you scored. So Just...total misfire. As much as he seems creepy, larry clark woulda been a hoot with this material. On the plus side never have I seen a collegiate E shindig depicted in such realistic blandness before. A film where beige is a lifestyle. "The water waits": eeyep, cuz your movie's all wet. The last half of this movie better have double the movie in it from the contents settling at the far end.
I'd agree, as a slasher film or even a horror film this is not very good. Basically, you're getting the slasher movie entirely from the perspective of a single victim who spends the first hour of the movie oblivious to the fact that he's even being stalked, so basically you're following him through his day to day. I guess the twist is that this exploitative role is typically reserved for a female character, and here it's a male, so we have scenes of him taking a shower, changing, etc while the camera leers at him. There's even a lengthy nude male chase scene, where he's clad in nothing but electrical tape over his junk. They sold the movie on Crispin Glover, but the man himself is probably on camera for less than a minute total. I'd have to imagine the rest was done by a double. They also sold it on a Bret Easton Ellis screenplay, but I can't imagine how the screenplay for this movie could have been more than 30 pages. I would be curious to see exactly what it looked like. The cast is decent and easy to look at, but they're not really given anything to do. As for how it ties into the true crime story, I had no idea. I've never heard of Smiley Face Killers. It sounds like a stretch, as smiley faces are pretty common graffiti. The killer(s) here is/are actually pretty good, but not given anything to do until the very end. They should have just set the villain(s) loose on this college campus and made a go-for-broke slasher film with a bunch of himbos on the chopping block. Honestly, that's the movie I was hoping for from the trailer. Sad to say, there's not a lot here to recommend.
The film started out promising but just didn't deliver. Personally I found the main character to be so unlikeable that I didn't care what happened to him. The movie is only 96 minutes but it doesn't go by very quickly. There is some decent violence in the last 20 minutes or so but it felt like it was put in as an afterthought. As for Crispin Glover I wouldn't have even known he was in the film if it wasn't talked about here. Nearly unrecognizable and very little screen time.
Yeah, after this movie I am finally over Ellis's brand of to the bone above it all arched gay chilly WASPiness. American Psycho will always be a great book to me but I guess a busted clock is right twice a day. I am finally over Ellis's brand of arch gay snooty chilly Pines Perfect lets-not-make-a-scene WASPiness. It bled through onto the movie and took the excitement out. Watched the movie all the way through last night. Gotta say, Rubenstein worked above the material: he was in every scene, did the movie's heavy lifting, and to me it looks like he took a couple real whacks that he is gonna feel when he gets older. In lost potential, this is the new Skyline.
