Monolight

I was expecting a much cheaper and worse movie if I'm being honest, so you could say I was a bit surprised. The effects were genuinely great, unfortunately they were in service of nothing.

The nasty "we must stretch this 10 minute idea to feature length" disorder is the main culprit. Stuff happens at a regular basis, don't get me wrong but it just feels like everyone's stomping in place pretending they're going somewhere. The dialogue especially feels like the actors were told the general idea behind a scene and ordered to improv, so they end up repeating the same thing over and over with minimal variation.

Very little about the plot and character motivations makes sense. I think the movie tried to crowbar in a "blood oath" explanation, but at a certain point... just go to a hospital.

In the first 15 minutes you understand the entire plot of the movie. The next 90 minutes are repeated scenes of either the main character trying to explain to people that she's not crazy, or scenes of her investigating and uncovering absolutely no new information. Those scenes are occasionally interrupted by visions with jumpscares. That's it. That's the movie.

I'm really not sure what we're meant to be scared of. The smile is about as ineffective as it was in "Truth or Dare" and the visions don't hurt you unless you're clumsy and hurt yourself by accident.

Then the ending happens and it's as generic as you can get nowadays. Smile clearly tried to take the high road in some sense and be a step above those stupid horrors with teenagers partying which is commendable. Being boring isn't better than being stupid though.

Pretty much a typical slasher. I appreciate the unusual setting but, well, it's a desert, there's not much of interest there. Overall, not that entertaining aside from a couple of moments of befuddlement.