This bears a disclaimer. If I categorize a film as “je nais se quois”, that doesn’t necessarily constitute a recommendation that it should be watched. In this case, I absolutely don’t recommend this film, but I just can’t deny… it’s a little different.
This is an incredibly psychologically cruel torture porn. I say “psychologically” because in terms of graphic violence or gore, this movie actually extremely mild by the torture-porn-type horror movie conventions. What little graphic violence there is mostly occurs out of frame. I’m hard-pressed to say there’s any visible blood in this movie at all.
Interestingly, they make some unusual character choices. There’s slight moral ambiguity, one or two characters show various shades to their personalities, and the final girl convention is totally out the window here. The movie definitely goes in its own direction, in a small way.
The very big problem is the basic thrust of this movie is a Columbine-evoking spectacle of social outcasts killing and maiming bullies, and, makes them seem sympathetic by spending the first act showing brutally realistic scenes of them being tortured in school by the bullies (trust me when I say I am qualified to judge how brutally realistic these things are.) It the cruel realism of the bullying was sufficient that it was very tough to watch.
When not torturing the geeks, the bullies talk about an upcoming costume party, not realizing it was staged by the geeks to gather, drug, imprison and torture them, which comprises the rest of the movie.
What makes this even worse is that this movie takes the Columbine-like premise and glorifies it by devising especially cinematically cruel tortures, in some cases coercing the bullies into very brutally torturing each other, pitting them against each other with promises of being spared if they please their captors. Instead of killing them, say, they merely disfigure them—or make them disfigure each other—and let them live. Yeah, it’s that cruel.
The entire exercise is very disturbing.
The acting isn’t great and except for the exceptional psychological cruelty the whole thing is carried out like a teen scream in terms of performance and production, if that matters.