Smiley Face Killers

By: Amos Lassen

"SMILEY FACE KILLERS"
A Homoerotic Look at a Serial Killer
Amos Lassen
Director Tim Hunter with his "Smiley Face Killers" attempted to create an intense, homoerotic new serial-killer tale based on real events that began with a wave of mysterious drownings of male college students. These haunt the California coast as Jake Graham (Ronen Rubinstein) struggles to keep his life together at school. He is stalked by a hooded figure (Crispin Glover) who drives an unmarked van. Jake is afraid that he may become the next victim in the killing spree.
"Smiley Face Killers" is based on the popular but widely ridiculed and debunked theory by New York City detectives Kevin Gannon and Anthony Duarte, and Dr. Lee Gilbertson, a criminal justice professor and gang expert at St. Cloud State University. It held that several young men found drowned were the work of a serial killer or killers. The alleged link was a drawing of a smiley face somewhere near the scene.
Director Hunter and writer Bret Easton Ellis have taken this and give us another horror film "based on true events". Jake is a college soccer player. His best friend Gabriel (Amadeus Serafini) is concerned because he's been acting strange and is depressed. This could have something to do with the fact he's stopped seeing his therapist and won't take his meds. He continues to go to parties and do ecstasy but he has lost feeling it when he makes out with his girlfriend Keren (Mia Serafino).

The film opens in 2016with a series of scenes depicting animal murders and random men being and bodies washing up on the shore. Then the camera follows Jake to the gym where he works out shirtless and to the pool. He then make out with Keren in tight undies and then naked before and after a shower. It seems that the director is obsessed with him.

Someone breaks into Jake's house and leaves a map of the murder locations for him and he receives a bunch of texts saying "The Water Wants You" and the sink and bathtub at his house keep getting filled with water. The Hooded Figure shows up with a hammer and makes his presence felt.
Hunter and Ellis certainly change the usual formula for showing skin in a horror film, but that's about it. There's no real suspense about what's going on. We eventually do get a few killings but they're mostly people who were in the wrong place at the wrong time with no connection to Jake. The killings are fairly brutal, as are some torture scenes, but their randomness and have little impact.