Bret Easton Ellis and Crispin Glover Team Up for the Painfully Dull ‘Smiley Face Killers’

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Bret Easton Ellis was just twenty-one years old when he published his first novel: Less Than Zero. Success followed, and with the publication of the highly controversial third novel, American Psycho, came fame. As an aspiring writer myself, it’s hard not to be envious.

But to be fair, his novels do follow certain tropes, which for me anyhow, eventually became quite tedious. It’s a damning telling of the upper class, portraying lives where deviancy has lost all significance. This is the world of Marquis de Sade’s darkest dreams. There’s no character arc in any of his novels. The characters in his books are closer to ghosts than human beings. They go through the motions, there’s a cyclical nature to their existences. In the end, there’s no moral. They are still as hollow as they were in the beginning. Perhaps there’s a transient moment of catharsis, but those moments are soon forgotten. Like Patrick Bateman, the titular American Psycho, so hauntingly states, ”there’s no catharsis, my punishment continues to elude me, and I gain no deeper knowledge of myself… This confession has meant nothing.”

This is why I still consider Less Than Zero to be my favorite of his work, even if the prose is lacking in comparison to his later novels. I mean, it’s no wonder, the guy was still in his early twenties for god’s sake. But at least the main character in Less Than Zero, Clay, still had some humanity at the beginning of the novel. There’s the sense he’s trying to keep his soul intact as he ventures into the hedonistic cesspool of L.A. One moment that always stuck with me is the sequence in which Clay cries in front of his uncaring psychiatrist. Unfortunately, in its sequel, Imperial Bedrooms, Clay’s humanity has evaporated; he’s become just another ghost. It’s a problem I have with a lot of Ellis’ later work: it just lacks heart, it’s just another meandering, cynical diatribe.

His cinematic adaptations are certainly a mixed bunch. American Psycho, mostly due to Mary Harron’s excellent direction and the pitch-perfect casting of Christian Bale is probably still the best one. The 1987 adaptation of Less Than Zero is entertaining as a piece of Reaganite eighties cheese, but as Ellis pointed out, it bears no almost no resemblance to the source material. The 2002 adaptation of his novel, The Rules of Attraction, has merit, though Roger Avary’s directing style can be overbearing at times. In 2008, there was an adaptation of Ellis’ short story collection, The Informers, but that one hasn’t been well received, to say the least.

Apart from his adaptations, there was also the strange occurrence of his original screenplay, The Canyons, which was filmed by none other than Paul Schrader in 2013, starring Lindsay Lohan and adult film star James Deen. This absolutely bizarre film was a huge bomb and was destroyed critically, but I have a feeling it’s going to amass a cult following in the future.

And now we have Smiley Face Killers, another original screenplay by Brett Easton Ellis. A horror film based partly on Smiley Face Murder theory that co-stars Crispin Glover. The combination of Ellis and Glover made this a must-see for me, even though their names are certainly no indicator of high art.

But whether it’s any good or not, it was certainly going to be something interesting… Or not.

The Plot

Jake Graham (Ronen Rubinstein) is a young college student with a history of manic depression. Despite the protestations of his girlfriend, Keren (Mia Serafino), he stopped taking his medication and is focused on calming his mind with rigorous physical exercise.

Unfortunately for Jake, a mysterious van, filled with hooded figures are following him around. They have targeted him for something gruesome, something that has to do with a string of suspicious deaths all linked with sinister Smiley Graffiti.

The Real Smiley Face Killers

Some have accused Smiley Face Killers of being of poor taste, as it cashes in on the true-crime aspects of The Smiley Face Killers theory, which connects certain suspicious deaths as being linked to either a lone serial killer or serial killer cabal, due to the findings of sinister graffiti of smileys near the scene.

Whether the filmmakers should have used this as a basis for a horror movie is up for debate. But let’s be fair, filmmakers have done this countless times. Countless horror films are based (or more or less “inspired”) on true-crime stories. It’s often enough a point of marketing for these films. Apart from referencing the real-life cases, Smiley Face Killers is completely fictional.