At its best this film is brave, cool and brimful of ideas, and if they're barely contained within the slightly flimsy story, that's down to Campos' decision to give himself the safety net of a well-worn genre.

| Jul 6, 2018

| Original Score: 1/5 | Nov 17, 2011

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.

| Oct 9, 2009

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.

| Original Score: B+ | Oct 7, 2009

Campos has developed a style of his own, one that owes as much to video installations as it does to cinematic narrative.

| Original Score: B+ | Oct 2, 2009

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.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Oct 2, 2009

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.

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | Oct 2, 2009

The 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.

| Original Score: A- | Oct 1, 2009

Afterschool, the almost frighteningly accomplished first feature made by Antonio Campos when he was 24, is high school as horror show.

| Sep 29, 2009

An intelligent, often gripping, and intriguingly autobiographical drama of paranoia.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 24, 2009

At heart it's another unpleasant existential crisis for another unpleasant schoolboy in another unpleasant American prep school.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Aug 24, 2009

With a lingering and often awkward style, Afterschool is ambitious but ultimately lacklustre.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Aug 24, 2009

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.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 21, 2009

The 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.

| Original Score: 4/6 | Aug 21, 2009

Compelling performances and some stand-out scenes but this lacks the cohesive language of Elephant, for example.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 21, 2009

Originality is perhaps the major missing component, but this still stacks up as a nifty debut with ideas and ambition to spare.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 21, 2009

This is a major debut. A dystopic vision, yes; but in comparison with the usual school high-jinks from US cinema - fiercely fresh and corrosively memorable.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Aug 21, 2009

The writer-director Antonio Campos uses his camera in catatonically slow movements, to varying effect: sometimes it feels probing, at others it looks like so much film school self-indulgence.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 21, 2009

Provocative, unflinching and stripped of anything approaching a consoling music soundtrack, it's a must for fans of challenging, A+ intelligent cinema desperately seeking the antithesis of High School Musical.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 21, 2009

This is certainly an original work, but not entirely successful in saying anything new about the way we watch "reality" today at second hand.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 21, 2009