Smile for the Cameras

An actor revisits her breakthrough role with bloody results in this dull closed-circle slasher from Smith (Did You See Evie?). After taking a break from the silver screen, middle-aged movie star Ella Winters worries that her career has lost its momentum. Then she gets an offer: if she participates in a documentary about Grad Night, the franchise-spawning horror movie that put her on the map decades ago, she’ll land a role in a major new film. The documentary shoot would reunite her with her castmates, whom she hasn’t seen in years, and require her to return to Tennessee’s Blackstone Cottage, where the film was shot. Despite her fears that the documentary could stir up ghosts from her past, Ella accepts. Shortly after production begins, someone starts killing cast and crew members with methods similar to those of the killer in Grad Night. While horror movie fans might appreciate Smith’s reverence for the genre, her plotting is predictable, and snatches of the Grad Night script, which Smith intersperses between chapters, are limp and uninspired. The result reads like a pallid version of I Know What You Did Last Summer. Agent: Jessica Errera, Jane Rotrosen Agency. (June)