New DVD: Afterschool

September 16, 2010 in Film | Permalink

Ezra Miller has recently been on "Royal Pains."

Auspicious and pretentious, Antonio Campos’ 2008 drama Afterschool is about as impressively unsettling a debut as any filmmaker could hope to make. The writer-director was only 24 when he turned out this assured feature about the seamy underbelly of a prep school in the age of YouTube.

Blank-faced and nearly catatonic, Rob (Ezra Miller) is an unpopular underclassmen at a New York boarding school. He spends as much time as possible in the unhealthy glow of his computer, devouring bite-size samples of stupid pet tricks and degrading porn. Forced to choose an extracurricular activity, Rob opts for the video club and has camera in hand when twin sisters who are seniors at the school die after overdosing on cocaine. He and his classmates seem almost as interested in preserving the moment for posterity with cameras as they do in getting help. The troubled student is subsequently assigned to make a tribute video for the deceased students, which only serves to sink him further into a moral morass.

Afterschool isn’t wholly original; Gus Van Sant’s Elephant is only the most recent influence. But Campos, perhaps because of his young age as well as his abundant talent, is able to use what he’s learned from other directors to tap into the disquieting side of growing up in this voyeuristic age like no other filmmaker thus far has. (Available from Netflix and other outlets.)

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