This was a Monster movie in that I needed to drink a 16 oz. Monster to watch it. I was falling asleep on this Ambien pill of a movie. This movie was awful. It was slow, plodding, and rudderless. I especially couldn't get over two things:

1.) The dead air. Long moments in which the camera wasn't pointed at anything in particular or long stretches of silence.

2.) The camera not moving. It was like the camera didn't have the ability to move up and down, so there'd be shots of chests, legs, or tops of faces. I don't think the cameraman zoomed in once the entire movie. Maybe director Antonio Campos was experimenting with this movie.

Fail.

The movie is about a boy named Rob (Ezra Miller who played a similarly weird role in "We Need to Talk About Kevin") in a boarding school. All we know from his very little speaking and even less activity is that he likes porn and violence. He saw twin sisters die in the hallway of his school and did nothing to help save their lives. In the end we find out, unsurprisingly, that he helped kill one of the girls by smothering her nose and mouth. It's possible there's more to this boy and I just zoned out, but that's what happens with slow pointless movies.

I'm trying to figure out why this was shown at last years New York Film Festival. At the same time I'm so incredibly happy that I didn't see it there and over paid for the privilege to watch paint dry. The plot of the film has an internet addicted teen at a prep school who is so disconnected with the world that the only thing real is what he sees in the You Tube clips or through his video recorder accidentally record the drug overdose of two of the girls in the school. We then watch as events play out. Long dull shots framed off kilter so as to cut off peoples heads combine together to reveal a story about teen life that is so artificial that you'd have to have limited exposure to either children or the films about them to truly be shocked at revelations. Alienation? Who would have thought? Drug Use? Amazing.Adults that are condescending and don't listen? Who knew? I kept waiting for something to happen, but nothing did. When the overdose occurs, I'm not sure how long into the film, a good distance, I was bored so my sense of time was all screwed up, I figured that the film would pick up. It really didn't. Honestly they sort of lost me with the opening montage of viral clips. One instantly got a sense of where it was going and what the filmmakers were going to be saying and the film didn't disappoint. I thought for awhile that the off kilter camera was always from the hero's point of view and then I realized that not, his head was chopped off sometimes too. Sometimes you wonder why a film can play something as prestigious as the New York Film Festival and not get a distribution deal or one that delays the release for a year or more, thats not the case here, its clear why no one picked it up, its dull and far from revealing. As I said at the outset the real question is how this dull little film ended up in any film festival at all.

The daily routine of a boarding school spirals out of control and shifts to new policies after the death of two students by drug overdose in one of the many corridors of the place. And it was all videotaped by another student, Robert (Ezra Miller),who was using his camera for a school project. The story, actually, begins with him - a typical teenager, just a little more lonely than the usual barely talking to his roommate and constantly spending his days on the internet watching porn or school fight videos. Connect those events and you have a figure formed, a bomb waiting to explode. The movie's concern is in seeing how Robert will react with this tragedy while continuing with his project (now a memorial tribute for the dead girls),classes and involvement with his classmates.

So, it denounces the internet in a large scale and stays contrived while criticizing reality, real people and their sometimes useless values. Deals with real and poignant themes but the characters aren't so real, specially when you see the now familiar faces and voices of Miller and Michael Stuhlbarg. Good actors here and elsewhere but since the director is trying an almost documentary kind of film their performances get in the way. The themes explored were great, the presentation and the choices made were what killed its potential. It's a suffocating experience. It's right for the movie but that at no point cannot take the pleasure of the viewing.

Director Antonio Campos uses of static images that represent the voyeurish act of seeing things very distantly, rejecting close-ups and movements. It's the vision of the kid of sees everything from a distance, the girls he can't reach present on the net videos, and also the ones he couldn't save because he was in a state of shock (we're fooled into this until a certain moment). Furthermore, it's slow and problematic in the sound department - and since I didn't have captions for it a few things were gathered with the help of IMDb boards. That's what the director tries to convey (it could be) but to me it was lazy filmmaking hacking from masters like Haneke and Van Sant, trying to be a higher (and updated) variation of "Benny's Video" with "Elephant". Fails on both accounts. It's too mechanical.

Why does it always have to follow through doubtful actions? Why it has to be inconclusive or misleading or going in several directions? And the ending? A real betrayal that almost destroyed the film. I saw film critics dissing films because the final image killed the experience and shifts the movie to an unexpected and unpleasant degree, and I've never understood much of that. Now I know. It didn't kill my enjoyment but I must recognize that it was very cheap.

I liked "Afterschool" because when it wasn't trying to be pretentious (and it is) it offered valid criticisms about adults negligence while dealing with kids and it's an intelligent and psychological radiography on today's youth and all of its problems. Extremely manipulative and quite deceiving towards its final moments but gotta admit Mr. Campos managed to build tension in all scenes even the ones you give less importance like when the headmaster complains about Robert's expressionless video.

Some people look at this as a critique of the America post 9/11, and there's plenty of sustainable elements to confirm such view. I don't buy all that much but that can make your view something extra if you look carefully. Mindblowing. My message to the hipsters who believe this is one of the 10 best of the past decade: relax yourselves because there's better out there. The director's technique is poorly employed here. It works with other directors because they know what they're doing and probably they're not copying a style, they're making a tribute and using a bit of their own craft. "Afterschool" is simply a copy and paste. Good movie, far from great. 7/10