This is a little movie well worth checking out. The performances are very natural, and the themes are enticingly provocative.
Comment
11/04/09
Afterschool (2009)
76
%
Tomatometer
How does the Tomatometer work 
Reviews Counted:38
Fresh:29
Rotten:9
Average Rating:6.4/10
Consensus: Antonio Campos'Afterschool is an intelligent, ambitious debut that boasts strong performances and plenty of ideas.
Synopsis: Early twentysomething writer/director Antonio Campos makes a startlingly assured directorial debut with AFTERSCHOOL. Set in an exclusive Northeastern prep school, the film follows Robert (Ezra... [More]
Starring: Ezra Miller, Jeremy White, Emory Cohen, Michael Stuhlbarg
Director: Antonio Campos
Reviews for Afterschool
It's both a supremely controlled exercise in form and tone and an intriguing exploration of the ways new technology intersects with age-old questions of dominance, control and individuality, particularly in the school setting.
10/09/09
Anthony Campos (who was 24 when he made this jolting pic) captures the numbing psychic scramble that just might cause the YouTube generation to go morally haywire. Or become filmmakers.
10/07/09
Whatever happened to the analog days when kids found contentment by cramming phone booths, sitting on flagpoles or simply going steady?
10/06/09
Antonio Campos's character study of a prep school social misfit named Robert (Ezra Miller) is an intimate psychological journey into a coded juvenile mindset.
10/03/09
Perhaps it is the intent of Afterschool, to create such a distancing effect the viewer is forced to observe, perhaps even critique these young people’s experience. If this is the case, Afterschool is one long period of detention.
10/02/09
Though thin on story, the film shows poise and vision, using bleak cinema-realite techniques with chilling effect. Campos promises to be heard from again.
10/02/09
Those with the patience to wait out Mr. Campos’s overindulgences will definitely leave Afterschool unnerved, which is probably exactly what he had in mind.
10/02/09
Top CriticThe passing of time and the evolution of technology may give it an expiration date, but more likely, Campos’ film stands to be an essential document of what it was like to be a young person in the late ’00s.
10/01/09
Deserves credit for managing to make prep school seem like the most hellish place on the planet, but is at some points hard to watch for all the wrong reasons.
09/30/09
If you’ve ever balked at drifty solitude or video meta-hell in the films of Gus Van Sant or Michael Haneke, this pale imitation will drive you batty.
09/30/09
Afterschool, the almost frighteningly accomplished first feature made by Antonio Campos when he was 24, is high school as horror show.
09/29/09
An intelligent, often gripping, and intriguingly autobiographical drama of paranoia.
08/24/09
Top CriticAt heart it’s another unpleasant existential crisis for another unpleasant schoolboy in another unpleasant American prep school.
08/24/09
It's an intriguing scenario, but what makes the film special (if at times slightly trying) is that it's all artfully shot in an apparently artless manner.
08/24/09
With a lingering and often awkward style, Afterschool is ambitious but ultimately lacklustre.
08/24/09
Afterschool presents modern youth in a cold light. It’s difficult to like but even harder to dismiss.
08/24/09
Reminiscent of the alienation in classic Antonioni films or the paranoia of Michael Haneke, the icy Afterschool is a little too self-conscious in its artiness. Alternating between the fascinating and the tedious, it still worms its way under you skin.
08/24/09
If there is one distinctive and promising voice to come out of the info-bite aesthetic of the YouTube generation it is Antonio Campos, whose debut feature Afterschool puts an intriguing spin on the high-school tragedy.
08/21/09
Top CriticThe film has a lot to say about the effect of technology on teenage interaction, how schools repress individuality and how sexual awakening causes, rather than relieves, teenage angst.
08/21/09
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