Afterschool

Rob (Ezra Miller), a bullied boarding-school outcast, inadvertently films two popular twin sisters dying from a drugs overdose while working on a video project. In an attempt to impress a girl he fancies, he then agrees to make a video tribute in the girls' memory. However, being a detached presence amid the surrounding hysteria, Rob comes up with a very different sort of film to what his headmaster was expecting.

Nigel Andrews, Financial Times: As the film's figures struggle to find their places in the landscape - off-kilter compositions provide here a head out of frame, there a shaky view of an empty corridor waiting for an event (and in one instance scarily getting it) - the hypnotic low-key performances by the young actors, especially lead Ezra Miller (face of Buster Keaton painted by Botticelli), are like murmurs of nascent consciousness. Despite a facile closing twist that plays into the hands of the web era's trashiest tabloid doomsayers, this is a major debut. A dystopic vision, yes; but in comparison with the usual school high-jinks from US cinema…fiercely fresh and corrosively memorable. (Verdict: five stars out of five)

David Jenkins, Time Out: The film has a lot to say about the effect of technology on teenage interaction, how schools repress individuality and how sexual awakening causes, rather than relieves, teenage angst.  It comes unstuck when, like Haneke's 'Benny's Video', it demands that we naively accept that video imagery can provoke copycat antisocial behaviour from the viewer. The remainder of the film is brave, intelligent and disconcerting, but this doesn't wash. (Verdict: four stars out of five)

Wendy Ide, the Times: The framing is brilliant: locked shots that deliberately cut off faces; seemingly random compositions that capture the thin, thoroughbred legs of the popular girls and the lurking inadequacy of the uncool kids who spy on them. The film has the oppressively voyeuristic feel of surveillance footage — comparisons with Haneke’s Hidden are inevitable. But the traumas here don’t play out in private, rather they are uploaded on to the internet for the amusement of strangers. (Verdict: four stars out of five) ·