Afterschool (2008) (a review)

Huh?

Have you ever finished a movie and just not gotten it.

Huh?

Now sometimes that's because I multitask, and even with this movie I was working on the computer the whole time. In this case that didn't hurt the movie because without a distraction I would have stopped it after ten lame minutes. Multitasking actually got me to watch the whole thing.

But when it was over...huh?

The story starts slowly, focusing on a student, Rob, at a boarding shcool who is miserable -- no friends, etc, all the normal high school loneliness and awkwardness from someone who isn't in that alpha/cool group that dominates every school. It's filmed in almost a cinema verite style with long takes, using silence, and really making you focus on the characters. Then about 20 minutes in, while he is filming an empty hallway for an assignment, two of the most popular girls in school stumble down the stairs and die of a drug overdose right in front of him. The rest of the film deals with the school's reaction to their deaths. At times it feels like he is trying to go for something very grounded and very real. At times it is almost dark satire, ala Heathers. And then it ends.

Huh?

Ultimately, I have no idea what the film was about or what he was trying to do. HEATHERS was very focused -- the mean cool kids vs the rest of the students, the switch that when the mean kids were killed they suddenly became liked, the phony hypocracy all told through this intense, wonderfully inappropriate dark humor that cut into the phoniness of high school life like a hot knife. This movie had...I don't know. It didn't seem to want to say anything, it didn't seem to be a slice of life, it was just...there.

Ultimately, it would have felt like a waste of my time except for three moments which were pretty cool -- one was a discussion between the boy and a girl where she explains that being a virgin is different for girls than boys (which is true), the second was an awkward sex scene (which was probably closer to most people's first time than any ridiculous Twilight-crap) and a hiralious moment after when the boy tries and tries to convince a firend that he really just had sex and it turns out the girl is sitting next to him the whole time, and the third is at the end which has a revelation about the boy that was jarring and different and at least interesting.

Three moments isn't enough. Even if you are working and just looking for something to play in the background, this movie just doesn't give enough.

PASS.