Francesco Gasperoni’s SMILE ... Review & Trailer

Here is a brand-new horror flick from Italy, which slowly seems returning to the genre after too many years of nothing, and finally some new names are coming into play. We already talked about upcoming movies Morituris (here and here) and Shadow (here). Recently I had the chance to watch - during the post production - a complete version of Francesco Gasperoni’s Smile and it made a pretty good impression on me.

Set in Morocco, Smile tells a well constructed and gruesome story of a group of young guys spending their vacations in the desert and quaint Moroccan villages. One of them, Clarissa (Harriet MacMasters), is a budding photographer working on her personal esotic report. After one of the locals steals her camera, she finds a replacement in a curiosity shop owned by a misterious man called Tollinger (Armand Assante). The group decides to visit the Moroccan woods and that’s where the shit really hits the fan. Soon the guys start dying one by one in accidental ways. After meeting a deer hunter, they discover that the camera kills everyone who’s photographed by it.

Although the plot may seem similar to thai success Shutter or several others asian flicks, Smile really doesn’t have that many connections with those kind of movies. For sure you won’t see long haired girls or strange moving ghosts. The first part is similar to Hostel (the editors are the same of Eli Roth's movie) or flicks like Turistas and Borderland about strangers in a strangeland, and so Gasperoni exploits a lot of fantastic Moroccan landscapes. There’s a nice work on the character development, which is never conventional and plays with the growing conflicts in the group, especially between the two male leads, Paul (Robert Capelli Jr.) and Tommy (Antonio Cupo). In the second part the movie shows similarities with the Final Destination series, with a fast raising body count. The narrative structure leads to a twisting finale which reveals a lot of what happened, but leaves enough questions open for the sequel, already in the director’s intentions. Avoiding cheap brutalities, Smile focuses much more on atmosphere and creepy moments, following a classic way of scaring audiences. Gasperoni clearly stated that he wanted to make a movie to entertain people and have fun. He definitely reached his goal.

As a feature-debut, Smile is well-directed and, more important, a well-written and an enjoyable genre experience.
The movie will be in Italian theatres at the end of august and will have a worldwide distribution in the future.

The Dude abides ...