Afterschool (2009)
Directed by Antonio Campos
A prep-school student accidentally films the drug-related deaths of two classmates, then is asked to put together a memorial video.
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What critics compared Afterschool to
As in Michael Haneke's Hidden or David Lynch's Lost Highway, we're watching video clips we can't trust - a repeated pan across an empty corridor leaves us waiting for something hideous to happen, and it duly does, though it's not the Columbine homage we might have cause to expect.
Durkin is a collaborator of Antonio Campos, whose disturbing Afterschool attempted a similar kind of harsh, gnawing suspense but was undercut by Campos’ formal trickery.
Strange, violent and justifiably messy considering the murky environment in which the narrative is trapped, The Devil All the Time is an impressive segue from the maudlin (meant as a compliment), intimate parameters defining early works like Afterschool (2008), the vibrant Simon Killer (2012) and the sublimely potent 2016 film Christine (read review).
Through his films Afterschool, Simon Killer, and Christine he has shown with greater detail the societal and personal factors which drive people to kill.
Certainly fun has never figured too prominently in the bone-chilling work of Antonio Campos, an independent filmmaker who made his name with realist horror films like “Afterschool” (2008) and “Simon Killer” (2012) and most recently directed the excellent psychological drama “Christine” (2016).
Antonio Campos ( Afterschool , Simon Killer , Christine ) has done an incredible job of building not just a world but a snapshot of an era, a sunbaked parish of dusty poverty that’s peopled by violent and desperate men.
With films including Afterschool, Simon Killer and Christine, Campos has specialized in portraits of violently disturbed people that present their characters without moral outrage.
In the deeply personal director’s statement that accompanies this blood-spattered Southern noir, the director Antonio Campos (Afterschool, Christine) explains that the influence of his childhood Catholicism still looms large over his personality.