Critic Reviews

• Andrew O'Hehir, Salon.com

  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.

• Lisa Schwarzbaum, Entertainment Weekly

  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.

• Kyle Smith, New York Post

  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.

• Neil Genzlinger, New York Times

  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.

• Nicolas Rapold, Time Out New York

  If you've ever balked at drifty solitude or video meta-hell in the films of Gus Van Sant or Michael Haneke, this pale imitation will drive you batty.

• J. Hoberman, Village Voice

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

• Simon Miraudo, Quickflix

  Antonio Campos' Afterschool plays like the creepy younger brother of Kenneth Lonergan's Margaret.

• Emanuel Levy, EmanuelLevy.Com

  The film examines such relevant issues as violence in school, voyeurism, and abuse.

• Anton Bitel, Eye for Film

  Both unassuming and uncomfortable, it is the sort of epoch-defining, Antonioni-style film (with a twist of Haneke) that is easily overlooked...

• William Goss, Cinematical

  When not downright creepy, it's quietly damning of an administration willing to point all the wrong fingers and play up all the wrong angles before brushing the matter aside.

• Mike McGranaghan, Aisle Seat

  This is a little movie well worth checking out. The performances are very natural, and the themes are enticingly provocative.

• Kam Williams, NewsBlaze

  Whatever happened to the analog days when kids found contentment by cramming phone booths, sitting on flagpoles or simply going steady?

• Cole Smithey, ColeSmithey.com

  Antonio Campos's character study of a prep school social misfit named Robert (Ezra Miller) is an intimate psychological journey into a coded juvenile mindset.

• Cole Hornaday, Boxoffice Magazine

  Perhaps it is the intent of Afterschool, to create such a distancing effect the viewer is forced to observe, perhaps even critique these young people's experience. If this is the case, Afterschool is one long period of detention.

• Scott Tobias, AV Club

  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.

• Brian Juergens, CampBlood.org

  Deserves credit for managing to make prep school seem like the most hellish place on the planet, but is at some points hard to watch for all the wrong reasons.

• Peter Bradshaw, Guardian [UK]

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

• Rebecca Nicholson, Times [UK]

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

Read all 18 critic reviews