As somebody who had not heard any of this before, it became a curious phenomenon to sit and watch a film and slowly have the realities begin to click into place.

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Afterschool is an ingenious voyeur's study on voyeurism. Kids today devour video toxic waste unguided and with no way to digest the daily dose of random clips that are void of any meaning or purpose, but are still irresistibly taboo.With its overstimulated emotional shut down and pathetic sentiment throughout, the film is confusing and has no cohesive story, all by design. The amateur documentary effects suck. And are also intentional. Afterschool does make a statement. With multi-dimensional accuracy.But as much as I admire its genius, I didn't like watching this movie. I would only recommend it to parenting intellectuals.

I first heard of this on IFC where the director was mentioned in the same breath as Gus Van Want. Really?? This garbage is the most boring film ever made. At first, it was advertised as Van Sant's Elephant, which is one of the best movies I've ever seen. That film was robbed of a best picture Oscar in my opinion. The difference between this film and Elephant is simply direction. Director Campos has created characters we don't care about and puts them in situations so dull and even far fetched if you managed to keep your eyes opened till the very end you've accomplished a lot. Depressing, boring, and manipulative the director here is trying to make you feel like you're watching something of merit in terms of art. How this movie won awards is beyond me. I can only say skip this one because you won't get the running time to watch this garbage back in your life. A complete bore and waste of time.

AFTERSCHOOL is a raw movie, and not in a good way. Unlike ELEPHANT or THE LIFE BEFORE HER EYES or even ACROSS THE UNIVERSE, this offering from Connecticut does a very poor job of building tension toward a cathartic climax. Instead, it allows a promising premise of an underclassman's video class assignment inadvertently capturing a moment of drama on campus to dissipate, petering out through a collage of implausible plot points, poor characterizations, and limp dialog. AFTERSCHOOL is raw as in raw eggs, and who likes those, except ROCKY and other such masochists? Perhaps this movie could be taken as a "morning after" pill; an antidote to the over-sexed, all-powerful Van Wilders and Stiflers of the Wild Bunch school of campus film-making. But with the two main characters a high school sophomore and freshman at a boarding school, what drugs and sexual misbehavior happens here (such as a nonchalant stroll to nearby a campus dale overlooked by upper floor school windows for a muddy consensual double-deflowering in broad daylight) seem beyond the pale for even these pampered yidiots. (Of course, there WAS that related item of Alaskan high school news a while back . . . )

Having liked Ezra Miller in City Island, and having liked seemingly similar festival films, I figured I'd enjoy Afterschool. Nope. Not even a little.As other reviewers have said, Campos really blew it with this one. I'm not sure if he was trying to be really different than all the other dark teen angst films, if he honestly believes there's a big enough audience for a film like Afterschool, or if he just didn't care if it was a viable movie.What makes this movie so painfully bad isn't the story, subject matter, or acting. It's the bizarre cinematography, and to a lesser degree, the mostly scattered, slow and dull script.