The Horror Show
Smudgemouth
by Scott “Unrested” Ackerman
There are plenty of scary movies out there on the web. With streaming services like Netflix, Hulu, plus many others, never before have horror movies been so readily available to such a wide audience. Most of which are studio releases, however, studio made horror films have ceased being scary to me. I’ve seen so many horror films, I thought I would never find anything scary again. In my effort to feel fear, I’ve turned to the other parts of the internet. I started reading and watching creepypastas, and for the first time, in a while, I felt truly unsettled by something. I dived further into the bowels of Youtube and I stumbled across the mockumentary found footage film Smudgemouth by Scott “Unrested” Ackerman.
Scott “Unrested” Ackerman, a famous Youtube vlogger and paranormal investigator was hired by Kaiden Kaisha Lmt. to perform Jumonogatari, a ritual to summon ghosts. The ritual follows that a story teller must recite ten ghost stories. Each time the narrator recites a story, he or she must blow out one of ten candles. When the final candle is blown out, a ghost is summoned into the human world. Not all the stories have to be told at the same time, the ritual can be picked up at a later date as long as the same number of candles that were left lit before are re-lit. Scott tells various ghost stories building to up his favorite Japanese urban legend of Smudgemouth. Unrested also begins having strange dreams after reading the story The Ten Day Dream. The plot thickens when Unrested’s fans begin to demand that he gets to Smudgemouth sooner rather than later.
Then, someone wearing a mask breaks into Scott’s house one night. Initially, he believes it to be an obsessed fan or a PR stunt performed by Kaiden Kaisha Lmt. Maybe it could even be Junji Inagawa, better known as Smudgemouth. Hundreds of years ago, Inagawa was a well known puppet maker employed by a temple. The puppet maker’s renowned work brought his temple tons of money but all the other temples were losing money. The priests from the other temples tried burning Inagawa to death in his sleep. However, he was found the next day in a near death state. His last request was “Bring me my tools.” His request was met and he was left alone. When people came back to check on him, he and his tools were missing. Priests from the other temples began turning up dead. Eyewitness claimed to have seen an abomination of flesh and puppetry fleeing the scene. This figure, believed to be Inagawa, became known as Smudgemouth. Every year that passes, Smudgemouth is said to replace more and more of his flesh with puppetry. Hundreds of years later, he’s still believed to be walking the earth enacting his twisted sense of justice on the world.
This film is interesting because it breaks heavily from the traditional narrative. Most movies are moved forward heavily by plot, on occasion, a person would tell a story either via recitation or flashback to assist the plot. A majority of Smudgemouth is Unrested telling ten different stories in order to complete a ritual. There is no flash back in these stories, he is literally just standing in front of a camera telling the viewer ghost stories. Somehow, this is infinitely creepier than any other movie I have seen. I think what makes it creepier is that Scott’s recitation of the stories allows the viewer to become immersed. The viewer really has to focus to capture individual details in order to grasp the whole story. That’s just the beginning, the footage is accompanied by a very atmospheric, ambient, and unnerving soundtrack, as well as disturbing video glitches. I think choosing to break the fourth wall aids in the creepiness. Scott “Unrested” Ackerman is a real vlogger on Youtube. This dissolution of the fourth wall allows the viewer, somewhere in the back of their mind, to think that this could possibly be real.
As creepy as this movie was, there were some flaws to be had. The biggest of which was the Smudgemouth costume. It wasn’t so much as terrifying as it was laughable. I find it hard to believe that a master puppet maker would create a mask equal to that of a second grade arts and crafts project. The behavior of the actor under the mask was also laughable. I feel like the actor was trying to be scary or creepy but it came off more like he was trying to be silly. Really that’s the only huge problem but I can also understand. Smudgemouth was a very small production and did not have the backing of a studio. Ackerman worked on this movie in his free time for months. That being said, I’m still impressed with the overall product that I can forgive the make-up department. However, in between the stories there are random cutaways to framing each segment. However, most of these were quite needless. I’m talking especially about a cutaway that was nothing but gory sped-up clips from various anime set to metal music. As awesome as the violence was, these clips were needless and contributed absolutely nothing the film overall. It’s not even a few seconds long, this lasts for several minutes. This is way too long. I feel like this was just thrown in as a time waster. While the mask is forgivable, this cutaway is not as it was completely avoidable.
This movie had me pleasantly surprised. I’ve seen several creepypasta “documentaries” but most are extremely low quality and consist of nothing more than still images, small clips of footage, probably some audio, and maybe words on screen explaining origins of the creepypasta. Smudgemouth tried to be an actual production by incorporating tons of footage shot entirely for this film. The film does borrow some stock footage from various sources, I noticed a few creepypastas in there. I’m pretty sure I saw footage from Marble Hornets too. Scott “Unrested” Ackerman’s performance is praiseworthy. I attribute this to his lifestyle as a vlogger. This is a guy who basically spends his life in front of a camera for everyone to watch. This definitely enables him, with the ability, to act completely natural on camera. Even though I praised Unrested breaking the fourth wall, it was a double edge sword. I’ll explain why, found footage for those who don’t know almost never goes well for the main character or characters. So knowing that, it kind of ruins the fourth wall. We all know Unrested hasn’t gone missing, he’s still uploading videos to Youtube. That could have been avoided by letting Unrested not disappear at the end of the movie. That’s what I like about a lot of creepypastas, the narrator doesn’t always die but is just someone reciting the story just to warn others who get too curious about the creepypasta. He should have followed with that tradition. That way the viewer doesn’t question Scott Ackerman’s disappearance at the end of the movie, when he is clearly still vlogging. With that said, Unrested’s production kept me up all night and like his name promised, I didn’t get an ounce of rest.
Billy Wayne Martin, HMS
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