“Malicious” Criticism – The Hollywood Reporter

The latest horror film directed by James Wan (the Conjuring franchise) is offered on HBO Max for a limited time coinciding with its theatrical release, but it would be advisable to catch it in a movie theater. Not so much because it demands to be seen on the big screen, but rather so that you can join in the gleeful laughs of your fellow moviegoers.

Take the ingredients from movies like Dario Argento, David Cronenberg, and Brian De Palma, throw them in a blender, and you’ve got something akin to this ambitious but ill-conceived effort. While Smart clearly reflects the filmmaker’s love for the classic yellow, it is less a tribute than the kind of half-baked imitation conceived as the result of a challenge.

Akela Cooper’s screenplay – based on an idea she developed with Wan and his wife, actress Ingrid Bisu (The nun) – begins with a prologue set in the sort of storm-devastated cliffside mental hospital you only see in Gothic horror tales. There, Dr. Weaver (Jacqueline McKenzie) cares for a patient who clearly needs drastic intervention.

“It’s time to end cancer,” Dr. Weaver dramatically announces to her fellow physicians. The relationship between this shocking introduction and the rest of the story is only gradually revealed, but suffice it to say that narrative consistency was clearly not a priority.

Cut to the present day, where we are introduced to the main character, the very pregnant Madison (Annabelle Wallis, of The Mummy and Annabelle), whose abusive husband (Jake Abel) repeatedly beats her, at one point slamming her head against the wall so hard that she wakes up with her pillow covered in blood. My husband soon pays dearly for his transgressions, when he is killed by an intruder who appears to be some sort of demonic creature. As he is sarcastically portrayed later in the film, think of Sloth from The Goonies, if he had also been a contortionist and badly needed a haircut.

After recovering from her injuries, Madison, who we learn suffered a series of miscarriages, begins to have horrific visions in which she sees the same creature brutally murdering other victims, including Dr. Weaver and the others. doctors involved in the opening sequence. Needless to say, the horrific massacre attracts the interest of two homicide detectives (George Young, Michole Briana White), one of whom is convinced that Madison herself is the murderer. Meanwhile, Madison receives a series of communications from the alleged killer. He calls himself Gabriel, which also happens to be the name of her imaginary childhood friend, whose memories she had long repressed.

For a moment Smart works well enough as a spooky, albeit slow, thriller tinged with supernatural elements rendered with visually striking CGI effects. But as the jaw-dropping storyline is revealed, the sillier and more frantic the procedure becomes, turning into a series of ridiculous chases and extremely bloody fight sequences in which Gabriel displays his admirable physical agility and deadly skills with a blade. The most elaborate set, undeniably strikingly staged, involves a massacre in which it wreaks deadly havoc in what appears to be the world’s largest holding cell for female prisoners.

The movie could have been an outrageously bizarre fun if it showed humor or ironic self-awareness, but it’s all played out so directly that viewers will find themselves laughing not with the movie but with it. The characterizations are paper thin, the dialogue is shallow, and the performances are, to put it charitably, adequate at best. And while Wallis, as the beleaguered heroine, certainly projects abject terror quite effectively, one longs for the nuance that a Margot Kidder or Jessica Harper would have brought to the role.