Nightmare at School
Nightmare at School
| 26 October 2007 (USA)
Nightmare at School Trailers

Who hasn't felt apprehensive at the thought of starting high school? This is the central theme of this short animated film. Playing on imagination and humour, the director offers viewers a thought provoking piece dealing with the transition that young people between the ages of 10 and 13 experience. Inspired by the work of Escher and Magritte, Catherine Arcand has created a graphically rich film through optical illusions and trompe-l'oeil effects. Her style aptly illustra tes the theme of perceptions and is perfectly suited to conveying the dream world into which the film takes us.

Reviews
InspireGato Film Perfection
Roman Sampson One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.
Ariella Broughton It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.
Darin One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.
artsycraftsinc It's no masterpiece, but it tells an entertaining (though too surreal for its own good) story with nice animation. Some of what I assume to be metaphors are far too strange to make much sense, but taken at face-value it's merely an amusing tale with good visuals. It has a very abstract style of animation, but unlike the abstract story bits, it actually works well. It fits nicely in the "Animation Express" collection on DVD/Blu-ray, which is where I viewed it. I believe its current score of 5.5 is a bit too low, I think maybe a 6.1 is better for this one. It's perfectly fine, If mediocre.