The creepy smiling people from Smile invaded a bunch of Major League Baseball games last night
Several smiling actors locked eyes with the camera for extended periods from the audience of a couple of different baseball games last night
Aux News Smile
Today, in “Human billboards, but we’re kind of into it?” news: Actors hired to promote the upcoming horror film Smile infiltrated three different Major League Baseball games last night, taking up positions where they’d be captured on the broadcast, standing stock still, and smiling directly into the camera for several innings at a time.
Clever, right?
If you haven’t seen the trailer for Smile—which legit scared the crap out of us with some of its more shocking imagery—the stunt is a pretty good encapsulation of the film’s creepy appeal: Lots of non-moving people with blank, creepy smiles that get held for way too long. (Of course, most of them aren’t also wearing T-shirts that have the name of the movie on them, but such are the realities of movie marketing.)
Mostly, though, we’re just enjoying all the footage and photos that’ve made their way online today, as various commentators get confused and/or freaked out by the appearance of these horror movie weirdos. (Also, there’s at least one clip of stadium security asking the Smile-r to please sit down, which they very politely do.) Our favorite is the footage shot by Jayne Perrisini, who was apparently seated next to the actor who took up residence at the Oakland A’s game, getting several videos of (and with!) her.
It’s not clear how, uh, authorized this little bit of viral marketing was—in addition to the security guards, there’s some indication that the Smile people were moving around the stadiums, possibly to stay on camera. If nothing else, massive kudos to the actors involved, who managed to keep a straight-(ish) face for what was apparently hours at a time in service of the campaign.
Smile had its world premiere at Fantastic Fest this week; the movie opens in theaters on September 30.
46 Comments
If nothing else, massive kudos to the actors involvedHell nah, fuck those assholes blocking views of the game for the people behind them. There are enough rude dipshits at games without adding people paid to be rude dipshits to the mix.
Calm down, she was only standing for a couple pitches.
Settle down Karen, it was clever and well done.
This is me absolutely being a shit and throwing gasoline onto the fire, but it’s baseball, not exactly a super fast moving sport and most of the attendees need to get pretty drunk to even pretend to enjoy it if they’re not like a 12 year old in 1967.
It’s a baseball game. What is there to see?
The ones standing sure, but the ones I saw earlier were just seated the whole time.
Yeah, the people sitting, no problem – sit there, be weird, all good. The ones that really felt obnoxious to me were the dudes standing at the Yankees & Cardinals games where people were there to watch Judge/Pujols hit their milestones, not some shitty living commercial for a movie.
let them complain to an usher. You were watching it on TV.
People did, you could see during the Mets/Athletics game an usher came over and made the woman sit.
Who cares? They can move their bodies.
Judge’s milestone**that’s still well below the real record of 73
It’s baseball so this was probably more entertaining than the actual game.
If all “fans” did at Philadelphia Eagles games was stand there and smile, it’d be a much more chill affair.
Though, when the Eagles last gave fans anything to smile about…
Hey, they’re 3-0 so far, there’s probably 2% less violence!
Haven’t been creeped out by the commercial/concept of a simple thing like since “it follows”. (I mean the trailer, this is kinda dumb and confusing)
From that close-up shot I’d have sworn that was Laysla De Oliveira, aka Dodge from Locke and Key
Just got done watching the trailer. Fuuuuuuuuu…For me, this is up there with It Follows, The Ring and The Grudge. Every victim has 7 days and they haunt your ass until time’s up.
Fu?
It’s short for “Fuuuuuuuuuck, that’s scary”
Nu? What’s fu with you?
Wouldn’t your face start to hurt after a while?
There is a graphic novel series I read recently, Gideon Falls, that has this phenomenon as one of the signifiers of the possessed and it was super creepy on the page. Also brings to mind the controversial series Crossed.
Ooh, I hope it was a spin off of Gravity Falls, featuring everyone’s favorite character Lil Gideon!
hopefully the opening credits are him bustin’ a move on that skatin’ board
Made me think of Kevin and the Smiling God from early Welcome to Night Vale.
Wouldn’t it be more effective to just make Hot Dog Straw: The Movie?
Or we could just watch this again:
I had Sunny side up, unt I had Sunny side down. I had Sunny side all ze way around.
What the fruck is a Chinese downhill??
Maybe if you were trying to make the cinematic equivalent of a powerful emetic.
Surprised they didn’t wear covid masks with smiles printed on them.
dude…this movie is fucking trash. Just saw it and couldn’t believe how bad it was. Kudos to the marketing department for making it look like more than it is, an ineptly made unoriginal studio horror movie with a pathetic amount of jump scares.
Sure you did.
How did you see it if it’s coming out on the 30th?
I’m surprised, it has good review and according to wikipedia people liked the test screening so much they decided not to just dump it on Paramount+.
When I first saw the trailer I honestly thought it was a sequel to 2018’s Truth or Dare (same creepy smiles). I hope it’s at least better than that one.
Honestly, it looked like ‘Persons life turns into an Aphex Twin video, jumpscares ensue.”Actually fuck it , can we just get a full length movie adaptation of Window Licker.( kind of NSFW )
Smiling is pretty weird when you think about it. Most animals bare their teeth as a show of aggression, not geniality.
Yes, but primates smile as sign of friendliness or submission. We aren’t the only ones.
Yup. And if you look it up the scientific consensus is basically the shrug emoji. The best guess seems to be that smiling with teeth together is sometimes a primate show of submission, which for humans might have evolved into a sign of harmlessness (and therefore friendliness).
Yeah but it’s completely involuntary. Babies smile when they’re happy, or take a good dump, without any instruction that’s how you show happiness. So there’s got to be some biological explanation.
Hell, I smile when I take a good dump.
Yep. And did society play a role in shaping that reaction? Heck no! Biology!
unexpected and good but as unexpected and good as crow-barring Billy Eichner pitching Bros into the NFL pre-game show LOL.
Back in the early aughts, some friends left a football game to find an unmarked VHS tape tucked under their windshield. They brought it over to my house, and it was just this: Can’t remember what we made of it at the time (I’ve killed more than my fair share of brain cells in the intervening 20 years.)