Afterschool (2008)

I don't mean the remarkably inept product of the protagonist, seen in this film, I mean this film.

Truly wretched camera work and editing, a total failure in character development, and a lack of plot that must have been intentional are only the beginning. There was some decent acting (though the special-features interview with the lead actor achieved more audience attachment in 3 minutes than the entire film did), but the direction was amazingly inept. Truly, Ewe Boll films are better.

You'll see totally pointless scenes tossed in at random (some guy throwing a ball against a wall, irrelevant to anything else in the movie, is only one such), a total failure on the part of the school faculty that I thought was intended to parody itself, but was apparently meant to be taken seriously, and total opacity from all of the characters - you see them doing things, but why they're doing them, or why they do anything, remains a mystery. The camera work was obviously intended to show alienation, but all it achieved was to alienate the audience. Much of the action happens just out-of-frame; a kiss happens with nothing but the girl's hair visible, and that's some of the better cinematography.

The director/writer/editor was, apparently, trying to be creatively arty. What he achieved was, sadly, amateurish failure. He was trying to portray teenage angst, but he only made that tedious. He was trying to cause revulsion in his audience at the inhumanity of attending a boarding school; he revolted me with his lack of ability to say anything to an audience.

You've been warned - you won't get those hours back. You won't even be able to trade them in for a blank - you'll carry the horror of this ineptitude with you.

Given a choice between watching this again, watching any 3 Ewe Boll movies, and being shot at sunrise, I'd have to think it over - but I think I'd take Ewe Boll over being shot. Watching this again would take a poor third in that contest.