A lot of horror films that are released aren't very scary. They mostly consist of lots of darkness, a lot of random crap from characters that don't add anything and then boom the monster comes out of nowhere and tries to scare the characters and audience with a random jumpscare.
Spooky right?
Well 'The Smiling Man' doesn't do any of that. In fact it removes all character dialogue. To start the film we get a nice introduction to where are, with some panning shots to show a very young girl sitting staring at her tv screen, eyes lock on. It is here when we first learn that something is wrong with a shadow moving past the screen which the girl picks up on and goes to investigate. It is here where we get a tracking shot that inching closer to a balloon. As children do they, she goes to investigate picking up the balloon too see a disassembled doll (nice foreshadow to later on.) She spots another balloon with the same small bag attached and we first see the glimpse of our monster, only showing his hand and brushing the child's hair acting like wing. It's smart not to show the audience the monster yet because that way we still feel like us as the audience are endangered with the little girl.
As the girl moves downstairs and into the kitchen, the monsters hair is shown and intises the girl over. Still keeping the audience on edgy the film makers use a high angle over head shot to establish the distance.
Then the reveal.
The girl slowly moves around the counter and the camera pans with her actions revealing a pasty white man staring right down the lens. Instead of having the monster do anything the camera lingers on him preforming weird movements. This is effective because right now we don't know what he's capable of and using shots like these creep us out. Then there's a close up with the man painting blood across his cheeks indicating something is wrong. Then we see what is causing blood to spew out on the floor. The mother.
The end goes well with this piece leaving on a shot with the monster moving his hand towards the girls face ultimately leaving it up to the audience what happens next...
Film: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zk-eY5S1Nck
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