Afterschool

I really can say I don't think I liked this. But it's not necessarily for the same reasons some are giving for similar dislike. I didn't like it because, despite the mind-numbingly slow pacing, I still sat through it until the end.

I went to film school (legit), and I hate films that are well aware they're of that " independent" variety. Unfortunately, you can't just use that moniker and expect everyone to forgive your film for being pretentious or boring.

Yes, this movie had several boring scenes. Unnecessarily boring. Don't try to find art, it's boring. I don't feel that long, single shots with heads cut out of the picture to be edgy or unique. I find it as forced art. Trying to show you have a way of breaking from traditional cinematography. I got news...it doesn't always work. This film is evidence.

The acting was pretty good, so i will say the characters really played their parts well. I felt what Rob was feeling because he's talented and did what he could with his part. Same with some of the others. That being said, I think the director had too many things he wanted to squeeze into one film. Perhaps this would've been better as a limited series.

You can't give us a compelling plot only to make us crave the real aftermath we believed we were entitled to. The director makes us wait and gives us a tiny little steak at the end as a final, disappointing meal.

There was a lot that could've done to make this film better. Develop characters better. We get it....teens, depression, isolation, discovery...bla bla bla. But not all are pathetic, confused worms.

Run-time...if you're not planning on delivering some kind of denouement, then go for a quicker Hollywood ending so we don't sit up late writing reviews on how we wasted time.

Stick with one story. Don't try to start sublots and abandon them because you can't remember where you're going. You're the storyteller. You're the one who takes us on the journey.

You're all wondering why I gave it a 6? I'm not sure....can't decide.

Though it undoubtedly bears promise, this is a film which will test your patience like few others. The film is slow-paced, which one could argue is a way for Campos to build further isolation from the main character, yet fails to depict anything interesting in its entire running time.

The characters are all cardboard-thin, save for the protagonist whose loneliness and eccentricity is apparent yet inaccessible. Believe me, I tried to feel some sort of emotional connection with him, but never achieved much except a strong yearning to fast forward the film through conversations that initially felt pointless and ultimately proved to be so. If Campos can take his skills of plot-structuring and possibly add more dialog to further reveal other aspects of his characters, then I strongly believe he has the potential to make an excellent film, but I just found this one to be an inaccessible drag.

Afterschool is a movie about a boarding school in United States and how rotten is the environment there. The film's pace is slow but that helps the viewer appreciate the photography and the filming technique. The comments of the director about the hypocrisy of the school teachers and the faulty communication between students and their parents are discreet but effective in a filming manner. The acting is superb (most of the cast has worked at New York theaters) and there are some innovations in the cinematography (different angles and film-editing games). It certainly reminds us of "Elephant" (Gus Van Sant) because of the subject but here the interest is centered in drug abuse and how someone witnesses it even though he/she is not connected to the drug-user. In addition, it comments on many more perspectives of puberty. An interesting film that leaves many thoughts to the viewer without forcing him/her to create a specific opinion. A definite must-see!

OK. I've tried to finish this exercise in audience alienation twice. First I stopped after half an hour of watching admittedly realistic, if over-familiar and desultory, dialog, and trying to stay interested in people I only half-saw, or saw from a distance, or from the back of their heads, all going through what looked very much like what innumerable prep school students go through regularly. Having decided there really wasn't a point to this, I came here and discovered... there is a Major Dramatic Event in the movie! Somewhere. So I put in the DVD again and watched for about ten minutes past said Major Dramatic Event. Only to find more perfectly believable, probably emotionally rich, scenes shown at a numbing distance and presented at a tortuously slow pace. Yes, this film is like "Elephant" - and a number of other punishingly self-indulgent Gus Van Sant films. Not to mention various low-budget French films I saw in Paris in the Eighties (I mainly remember long shots of people walking down hallways, the echo of their footsteps the only soundtrack). This is, in other words, a parody of many people's worst fantasy of an independent film. It's not exaggerated to say I got to the point where I was actually resenting the film's abuse of my (not overly available) time. As for being "innovative".... if you loved "Last Year at Mariendbad" (1961), this kind of film-making will be right up your alley.

I remember first seeing the trailer for this a long while back and wanting to see this, but I just never got around to doing so. Now I don't know why I waited so long. I think this is a great film that takes a serious and realistic look at high school life. The characters mumble and show little emotion in an effort to blend in to their surroundings and not stick out, yet they all hide their own dark secrets and personality flaws from the rest of the world. They adapt voyeuristic tastes and view the troubles of others instead of deal with their own, whether through watching cell phone videos of student fights on YouTube or making such spying videos of their own. The acting does get a bit dull at times and tedious to follow along with, and the quiet audio and super-steady camera shots may start to drag on one's patience. But for the most part that fits along with the amateurish, voyeuristic mood of the piece. And the performances, for how plain they were, do captivate the audience in a neo-realistic sense. This is a director to keep an eye on in the future.