AFTERSCHOOL Review
Throughout the entirety of his consistently solid career, director/writer Antonio Campos’ focus on the brewing darkness within every man, woman, and child has proved to be fertile ground for the filmmaker. In his most recent work, THE DEVIL ALL THE TIME, Campos cast a wide net that caught an almost comedic amount of dark brutality lingering within every resident of that film’s backwoods setting. In his best work to date, the tragic CHRISTINE, the darkness within still dealt with the prevalence of violence in society but analyzed it through the deeply personal lens of one woman falling apart. To that same tune, Campos’ first feature, AFTERSCHOOL, stylistically peers into the dark corners of the burgeoning internet, a prestigious prep school, and the young boy (Ezra Miller) influenced by both of these settings in the most disturbing of ways.
With an onslaught of of loud and violent, blurry imagery opening his tale, Campos and his cinematographer Jody Lee Lipes embrace voyeurism as we see a sophomore named Robert (Miller) throw himself into the gore sites and porn videos that are just a click away in the mystic corners of the internet. Surrounded by darkness in his dorm room with only the heavenly glow of his laptop shining on him, the unique looking Miller casts a focused gaze on a porn video that quickly takes on abusive and violent undertones. Even so, the young man looks on, not with sexual desire (at least not this time) but with some sort of intense curiosity that only ends up being cut off as his drug dealing roommate (a young Jeremy Allen White) and his friend (a young Emory Cohen) interrupt with their entrance. As he is whisked away from a digital world that offers a trove of unlimited violence and sex, he quietly enters the real world that is filled with foreboding isolation and ruthless behavior. As Campos and Lipes’ camera stalk our young protagonist in unnerving long takes with framing that disrupts all normal notions of actor positioning, AFTERSCHOOL slowly forms into a depiction of a lonely, neglected child finding solace in the digital realms of real violence and fake “love”.
A film that is separated into two distinct halves, the filmmaker demonstrates an assured hand at creating distinguishable tension and a never-ending sense of dread; all within the confines of a manicured East coast prep school no less! Indeed, for Antonio Campos, the talent of being able to create air-tight tension throughout his tales seems to be one he’s had forever. As with his other works, the filmmaker finds success in creating well realized worlds that still manage to feel alien and foreboding as AFTERSCHOOL’s prep setting gives off an air of prestige while still emitting vapors of something rotting within. Similarly, the film’s protagonist follows in suit. With Robert, Miller, in a highly impressive role for his age, naturally inhabits the space of an awkward, lonely kid desperate for some kind of connection in a setting that only seems to cruelly lash back at him. In his always studious eyes, Miller almost allows viewers to see the deeper turmoil within his character, but much like in his interactions with the school’s therapist (Gary Wilmes), the young performer pulls back before any sort of release can come through resulting in a character and performance that treads the line between disturbing and tragic.
While the motions of the film seem to point in one obvious direction that can only involve an internet-addicted, loner struggling at school, Campos directs his film into a unique new situation for his characters. However, when the film heads in this new direction after a genuinely disturbing depiction of a school tragedy takes place, AFTERSCHOOL can’t quite keep up the intoxicating suspense and attention it had built up in its excellent first half. In this second half, Campos opens the world up to focus in on Robert’s increasingly decaying relationships with everyone from his school crush (a quietly nice Addison Timlin), his roommate, and even the prep school’s own principal (played by Michael Stuhlbarg) who goes on to eventually fall in line with Campos’ continuing theme of a world that is just as shadowed as its main characters. While these characters are backed by solid performances, the situations Campos depicts in the film’s final half are at best, better executed in other similar films and at worst, almost cartoonish in their antagonism(this point in regards to Stuhlbarg’s principal character). Even the film’s last minute “twist” fails to hit its intended mark as its admittedly unsettling reveal is masked by the nagging feeling of “let’s put this in here to REALLY make things dark”.
Despite those stumbles, the filmmaker and his crew create a film that manages to stick with you long after its darkly tongue-in-cheek end credits flash by. With camera movements that hint at an encroaching darkness in its deadly efficient pans and zoom outs in addition to discombobulating moments of aspect ratio changes that mimic the frames of webcams and phone cameras in all their 2008-era graininess, AFTERSCHOOL shows off impressive production design. In fact, while Campos would go on to evolve the aspects of world building (THE DEVIL ALL THE TIME) and genuinely involving depictions of personal unravelings (CHRISTINE), the stylized production he concocts here with his crew has yet to be topped (granted, I still haven’t seen SIMON KILLER).
All in all, AFTERSCHOOL is an impressive first feature for any director/writer. While Campos hits on the tried and true 21st century themes of isolation and the strange indoctrinating powers of the darker corners of the web, the filmmaker’s brushes with a wrenching portrayal of suffocating loneliness wrapped up in a deadly efficient production acts as a sign of the highs that Mr. Campos would soon encounter in his future works.
3.5/5
