Movies
[Sitges Review] The Kids Are Not Alright In Dreadful ‘School’s Out’
After making a splash with his stylish thriller about female obsession, Faultless, writer-director Sébastien Marnier now looks towards a bleaker and more provocative existential thriller that’s part Dead Poets Society, part Village of the Damned, sprinkled with a dose of Take Shelter and served with a side of Children of the Corn.
Adapted from the novel of the same name by Christophe Dufosse, we begin as most tales do, with a teacher who throws himself out of a window in the middle of class. For the rest of the film, we follow Pierre (Laurent Lafitte, who also played the creepy neighbour in Elle) as he is brought by a prestigious French institute to serve as a substitute teacher. His students? Top of the line rich kids in an intellectually advanced class. The kind that has never wanted for anything in their lives, have huge entitlement issues, and are emotionally cold as ice, which makes the rest of the school despise them. Pierre quickly finds that he even has to keep changing his teaching plan, as the kids are years ahead of the other classes.
The class is lead by a group of six kids who get the best grades. Soon, Pierre starts noticing little things, like the kid who keeps being beaten up while no one cares, and how secretive and protective the core group is. Once he starts following, things get more sinister and School’s Out gets tense, as Pierre starts to suspect the kids are monitoring him, and maybe his predecessor’s suicide attempt wasn’t so random. Their constant after-school meetings at a quarry, the kids beating each other up in total silence, the sinister manifesto-like DVDs with shocking footage of animal slaughter, terrorism, and environmental catastrophes don’t help convince us that these are just innocent, ordinary kids.
The performances in School’s Out are plain fantastic. Laffite plays the hell out of Pierre’s increasing paranoia, as he not only gets more disturbing clues to the kids’ plans for graduation night, but starts getting calls in the middle of the night, and cockroaches start invading his apartment – that he is also writing a dissertation on Franz Kafka may be too obvious to be a coincidence. It is the kids to are the stars of the film, however, particularly the leaders of the group, Apolline and Dimitri. Luàna Bajrami plays Apolline as if she was a character straight from Village of the Damned, only way more intelligent and manipulative, and Victor Bonnel’s Dimitri looks like a grown-up male version of The Shining twins, with a delicate build that hides a sinister gaze.
Sébastien Marnier keeps the tension going by making the audience question Pierre’s sanity and whether he’s actually seeing these things. It’s a perfect example in building tension without really showing anything, mostly through atmosphere, visuals and sound. Key to this is an electronic score by Zombie Zombie that evokes 80’s horror films, mostly Carpenter’s, with great success. Unfortunately, this backfires towards the third act, as the vagueness of the mystery makes the payoff too confusing to appreciate.
School’s Out also deals with existential dread and the question of how children have become desensitized yet traumatized by the state of the world they are supposed to inherit, with a final scene that will spark plenty of conversations.
Movies
SCREAMBOX Investigates UFOs and Extraterrestrials: Several Documentaries Streaming Right Now!
As someone who is obsessed with UFOS (or more recently known as UAPs) and the concept of extraterrestrials, I love a good documentary. Sightings have been on the rise since the 1940s, with the atomic bomb seemingly acting as a catalyst for new visitors. But what are these UFOs/UAPs? Is there an explanation or are they simply beyond our explanation? Why are they here? Who are they? How much do our governments know? The questions are endless and so are the documentaries that attempt to uncover the secrets behind decades of sightings and alleged confrontations.
Whether you’re a seasoned viewer or new to the rabbit hole, there’s always a handful of interesting documentaries to get your neurons firing and leave you with sleepless nights. SCREAMBOX is investigating with the addition of several docs, all streaming now on the Bloody Disgusting-powered service. Here’s the breakdown:
Aliens (2021): Beam into this unidentified streaming documentary for a glimpse into Extraterrestrial life. Aliens are hypothetical life forms that may occur outside Earth or that did not originate on Earth.
Aliens Uncovered: Origins (2021): Before Area 51, hidden deep in the desert, the military discovered a hidden gem that helped them create Project Bluebook.
Aliens Uncovered: ET or Man-Made (2022): The crash of Roswell wasn’t meant for New Mexico. In 1947, a neighboring state had 3 major sightings that were swept under the rug.
Aliens Uncovered: The Golden Record (2023): In the late 70s, the US government launched a message to our distant neighbors.
Roswell (2021): This high-flying documentary examines the July 1947 crash of a United States Army Air Forces balloon at a ranch near Roswell, New Mexico. Theories claim the crash was actually that of a flying saucer, but what is the truth?
Also check out:
The British UFO Files (2004): Since the 1940’s the British Government has been investigating the Flying Saucer phenomenon. High-ranking military and government personnel, speak out for the first time, offering unique eyewitness accounts and inside information.
Alien Abductions and Paranormal Sightings (2016): Amazing Footage and stories from real people as they reveal their personal encounters of being abducted by Aliens.
And do not miss Hellier (2019): A crew of paranormal researchers find themselves in a dying coal town, where a series of strange coincidences lead them to a decades-old mystery.
These documentaries join SCREAMBOX’s growing library of unique horror content, including Onyx the Fortuitous and the Talisman of Souls, Here for Blood, Terrifier 2, RoboDoc: The Creation of RoboCop, Hollywood Dreams & Nightmares: The Robert Englund Story, The Outwaters, Living with Chucky, Project Wolf Hunting, and Pennywise: The Story of IT.
Start screaming now with SCREAMBOX on iOS, Android, Apple TV, Prime Video, Roku, YouTube TV, Samsung, Comcast, Cox, and Screambox.com.
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