GamerTab That was an excellent one.

Baseshment I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

SeeQuant Blending excellent reporting and strong storytelling, this is a disturbing film truly stranger than fiction

Roy Hart If you're interested in the topic at hand, you should just watch it and judge yourself because the reviews have gone very biased by people that didn't even watch it and just hate (or love) the creator. I liked it, it was well written, narrated, and directed and it was about a topic that interests me.

brownjackie As noted by many, Afterschool is one in a bunch of teen death films, but that doesn't necessarily make it unoriginal or plot less. Afterschool does have a developing plot, but its visual side IS unoriginal. Many mention Van Sant's Elephant (2003), - personally I thought of Michael Haneke many times, especially his Benny's Video (1992), which is thematically similar and also must have been a visual inspiration for Afterschool. I do think that director Campos has succeeded in getting formidable performances out of his actors, especially Ezra Miller, who portrays adolescent depression and bewilderment forcefully, and Michael Stuhlbarg as the principal. With Afterschool, he has made one of the most depressing films American cinema has ever produced (that I've seen). EVERYTHING is wrong in the world portrayed in this film, and especially adults are univocally idiotic and destructive, they are hypocrites, mean, egotistic, inhumane, and/or stupid. It's almost as frustrating to watch as The Death of Mr. Lazarescu (2005), (grueling death realism for 150 minutes in Romania), but not as brilliant. I generously give 7 stars to Afterschool, because I am a huge Ezra Miller-fan, but be advised:This movie is very nearly impossible to love.

emdoub I don't mean the remarkably inept product of the protagonist, seen in this film, I mean this film.Truly wretched camera work and editing, a total failure in character development, and a lack of plot that must have been intentional are only the beginning. There was some decent acting (though the special-features interview with the lead actor achieved more audience attachment in 3 minutes than the entire film did), but the direction was amazingly inept. Truly, Ewe Boll films are better.You'll see totally pointless scenes tossed in at random (some guy throwing a ball against a wall, irrelevant to anything else in the movie, is only one such), a total failure on the part of the school faculty that I thought was intended to parody itself, but was apparently meant to be taken seriously, and total opacity from all of the characters - you see them doing things, but why they're doing them, or why they do anything, remains a mystery. The camera work was obviously intended to show alienation, but all it achieved was to alienate the audience. Much of the action happens just out-of-frame; a kiss happens with nothing but the girl's hair visible, and that's some of the better cinematography. The director/writer/editor was, apparently, trying to be creatively arty. What he achieved was, sadly, amateurish failure. He was trying to portray teenage angst, but he only made that tedious. He was trying to cause revulsion in his audience at the inhumanity of attending a boarding school; he revolted me with his lack of ability to say anything to an audience.You've been warned - you won't get those hours back. You won't even be able to trade them in for a blank - you'll carry the horror of this ineptitude with you.Given a choice between watching this again, watching any 3 Ewe Boll movies, and being shot at sunrise, I'd have to think it over - but I think I'd take Ewe Boll over being shot. Watching this again would take a poor third in that contest.

mikeatlarge Having liked Ezra Miller in City Island, and having liked seemingly similar festival films, I figured I'd enjoy Afterschool. Nope. Not even a little.As other reviewers have said, Campos really blew it with this one. I'm not sure if he was trying to be really different than all the other dark teen angst films, if he honestly believes there's a big enough audience for a film like Afterschool, or if he just didn't care if it was a viable movie.What makes this movie so painfully bad isn't the story, subject matter, or acting. It's the bizarre cinematography, and to a lesser degree, the mostly scattered, slow and dull script.

valis1949 AFTERSCHOOL is certainly not the kind of movie which would appeal to most people, yet this film very aptly portrays "the unease of a troubled state of mind". Slow and deliberate pacing epitomizes the depression and sense of dread of the student body. At first glance, it would appear that these young people have it all; intelligence, money, and social standing, yet with all these positive attributes, their sophisticated environment only highlights and magnifies the emptiness of their lives. High School is usually portrayed as a happy time, yet in this case, nothing could be farther from the truth. A bit of a re-write might have tightened up the storyline, yet overall, AFTERSCHOOL is most definitely worth a look. Gus Van Sant's, ELEPHANT is somewhat similar in that it also tries to convey a sort of 'dreamy malevolence'.