THE CIGARETTE is an indie horror-comedy feature from director Zachary Snygg. It has practical gore effects and fun death sequences. Read our The Cigarette movie review here!
We all know that smoking is bad for you, but we were not aware that cigarettes also turn us into murderous psychopaths. This is the premise of The Cigarette, a new indie horror feature from director Zachary Snygg.
The film was just as absurd as its premise suggests, which seems to have been the intention. After being screened at Horror-on-Sea in the UK, The Cigarette is likely to continue its festival run into the near future, so fans of horror comedies will have plenty of time to catch it on the big screen.
Jasmin Flores stars as Jasmin, a lazy and unemployed young woman who proudly relies on handouts from others.
After a breakup, she finds herself being kicked out by her now ex-boyfriend, Steve (Luke Couzens), and her parents also refuse to allow her to come back to live with them, which leaves Jasmin in a desperate situation.
She also speaks with an entirely different accent from her parents, and the reason for this was never acknowledged or explained. However, Jasmin’s situation soon improves when a stranger called Omari (charismatically played by Jon Arthur) approaches her with a job proposition, offering to pay her ludicrously high amounts of money if she sells the cigarettes his company produces.
Jasmin gladly accepts the offer, and the money soon starts rolling in, but there proves to be a catch. As mentioned above, anyone who smokes the cigarettes quickly becomes a savage lunatic, killing anyone they encounter.

More comedy than suspenseful horror
Although there were a few shots of Jasmin walking through New York City and some aerial shots of the city’s skyline, The Cigarette seems to have been primarily shot in a more rural town that regularly stands in for the city, and the contrast was jarring.
The very low-budget nature of the production was evident everywhere you looked, so some suspension of disbelief will be required to enjoy The Cigarette.
Flores wrote the script alongside Snygg, and while the material was hardly Oscar-worthy, she still managed to deliver her deliberately silly lines in a way that will no doubt make you laugh at certain points.
And while she clearly resents work of any kind and comes across as rude to most of the people she meets, Jasmin ultimately still strives to do the right thing in most situations, making her into a grudgingly likable individual.
She also nonchalantly reacts to dire and life-threatening situations, as the makers of The Cigarette clearly wanted to lean more into comedy than suspenseful horror.
The Cigarette is screening at festivals
The gore effects were enjoyably practical and old school, with decidedly fake-looking blood and severed body parts being flashed across the screen. The filmmakers clearly had a lot of fun with the kills, and the death sequences were one of the film’s main highlights.
However, the final act of the film moves in a completely different direction, with Jasmin infiltrating the company responsible for manufacturing the killer cigarettes as she investigates the killer substance, so the body count is significantly reduced towards the end of the film.
Needless to say, The Cigarette loses much of its momentum in the third act, so the script certainly could have used more polish before the start of filming.
It certainly was not a masterpiece, but The Cigarette still proved to be a humorous and decidedly ridiculous comedy about a substance that turns its users into raving killers.
It may be too silly for some, and the script clearly faltered in the third act, but anyone looking for an unashamedly silly horror comedy filled with plenty of over-the-top gore will no doubt enjoy The Cigarette.
Details
Director: Zachary Snygg
Writers: Jasmin Flores, Zachary Snygg
Stars: Jasmin Flores, Tina Krause, Darian Caine, Johnnie Arthur, Sarah Marable, Luke Couzens
Plot
When an unsuspecting Jasmin Flores is dumped by her boyfriend, and dismissed by her parents, she gets a job selling cigarettes in the streets of New York City. Unbeknownst to Jasmin, the cigarettes cause madness, chaos, and murders in Manhattan. Once the murders begin to pile up, Jasmin has to claim her innocence while solving the riddle of the laced cigarettes.
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