Film

Afterschool (2008)

Director: Antonio Campos

Movie review

From Time Out Online

A low budget, semi-experimental drama by a first time director employing a largely amateur cast, 'Afterschool' is perhaps the most unnerving, and certainly one of the most impressive films in this year's LFF. We first meet Ezra Miller's pale and awkward Robert masturbating to streamed images of violent sexual assault, and soon these fascinations begin to bleed into his everyday life, as violent upheaval strikes the high-end boarding school he attends. Campos uses Robert's dilemma to examine a broad array of issues facing modern American teens: isolation and disaffection, surveillance and information culture and their ramifications on socialising and self image, the eagerness of wealthy parents to utilise psychotherapy and medication to control their children. Like stranding the cast of Dawson's Creek in the world of 'THX-1138', 'Afterschool' is intelligent, rigorous, excruciating and endlessly fascinating.

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