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
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.