samemckee

I'm not opposed to the idea of stitching a bunch of music videos together to make a movie. I can excuse the fact that all the acting is bad. She's a first time director directing dancers. I can also excuse the fact that the story doesn't start until 75% through. I get it. It's a Frankenstein's monster project. That's why none of the songs contribute to the overarching "story". It wasn't written as a concept album, it's a collection of random pop songs. (If you want a better example of this, check out Daft Punk's Interstalla 5555.) I can excuse all of that.

But I can't excuse 96 minutes of "se*y infantilization". This whole "goo goo ga ga look at how se*y I am" shtick was played out on Crybaby, now it's genuinely concerning.

And that's every scene.

Every character is cosplaying as a toddler in this film and it always feels creepy.

The crazy thing is, I could STILL excuse all of the creepy stuff it it was in service of something.

Is it a statement on how little girls are expected to mature faster than boys?

Is it a statement on how we all crave our youthful years?

Is it a statement on how men see women?

No. It just isn't.

As soon as you look closely at what the "film" is trying to say, it becomes clear that it isn't trying to say anything. It's trying to be bright, stylish, and edgy, but it just falls flat.

The location scouting was pretty good, that's all i have left to say.

Girl really thinks she's Lady Gaga lol.

Completely devoid of originality. At any given scene in the movie you can tell which movie they're trying to rip off (although it's mostly copying The Ring and it Follows) so the tone of the film is completely schizophrenic with no consistent style or personality of its own.

It also doesn't help that the only "original" scare of the movie boils down to "hey that person suddenly has a derpy smile" (which comes off as humorous most of the time) There's also jumpscares. LOTS of jumpscares. None of them feel impactful or shocking at all, but at least there's a lot of them.

But the biggest crux of this movie is its characters. There are none. Smile's idea of "character development" is either giving a character a funny one-liner and cutting away immediately; or giving a character a dead relative that they feel sad about. Halfway through the movie, my family tried to name a single character trait from any of the characters. We couldn't come up with a single one. It's hard to feel scared of a movie when you don't care if any of the characters live or die.

Without the marketing budget and the INSANE amount of praise this movie is getting, this would be another Truth or Dare.

I promise every person reading this review will forget this movie existed after 6 months.