American class
One night, at 2:17 a.m. very precisely, An entire class has disappeared, except for a single student. The children have detailed in the streets of this small American town, arms stretched behind. A month later, residents are still looking for answers. Their suspicions are on Justine (Julia Garner, once again very fair), the professor. A mysterious postulate around which all the promotion ofPassed outall the more intriguing when you know the talent of Cregger for the narrative sleeve effects.
Evoking the dark tales which drew their inspirations from obscure various facts, like the Hamelin flute playerit is dispatched quickly well done in an introductory sequence narrated by a child’s voice. The story that will be told to us is good A Fantastic Fantastic Fablewith its eccentricities, its irony and of course its symbolic value.
Yet, the true nature of the issues ofPassed out is not the main attraction of the film. Of course, the first act is delicious of mystery since the screenwriter takes the time to cultivate it. And of course, the plot will give the spectator the pleasure of having a head start on all the characters that ruminate after the drama. But said mystery is not as convoluted as you might think, and above all it is at the end of the first part, which can disappoint some.
Let us be reassured: as soon as it reveals the pot with pink, Congger is working to change the change by instilling humor in the formula. The variations in tone do a lot of good to this big block of more than 2 hours, traveled with sequences of classic anxieties, sardonic gags and touches of surrealism, up to an absolutely enjoyable final which risks being talked about. Welcome instability after a few successful, but more conventional horror scenes, resting a little too much on the same spring. We must fulfill the contract for the Horror General American.
To citizens
The main attraction of the film is rather its structuregreatly inspired by Magnoliaof the admission of the filmmaker. As in the classic of Paul Thomas Anderson, who also sported tale tunes (at least in his introduction), we follow several characters. We also think of a Short Cuts Horrific, except that the segments are not simultaneous. It is apparent after two feature films: Cregger tends to please the device. However, it is too formidable not to impress.
To juggle the perspectives in this American suburban suburb, the filmmaker makes it an impressive painting of precision. Parents of students to teachers, from the flics to the marginalized, the film intends to unravel an American social machine unable to keep a cool head and to take the step back that it imposes on spectators. By dint of chiseled dialogues and details scattered everywhere, It highlights the prejudices that paralyze the interior systemwhether community, political or even police officer.
Without revealing anything (it’s difficult, believe it), the film features citizens in search of targetsvictims of manufactured reasoning which collapse before the irrational. At the bend of an insert, the staging admits that the inhabitants (which literally participate in the enlargement of their residential district) hold a piece of truth, but fail to get out of their limited perspective. The almost morbid banality of the suburbs, barely less empty extension of real estate cemeteries of Barbarousdoes not help things, swept away with cynicism by the director of the director.
Vaguely distorted mirror of post-truth in the Trumpist era, the film hides its most political ideas behind its original title, Weapons. The weapons in question being this class of child instrumentalized by almost everyone, almost anyhow. Enough to recall the most nauseating debates that poison the public debate across the Atlantic and give the director an opportunity to explore the panic fear of ignorance that paralyzes his country.
The subject here, It is ultimately this ordinary fear gnawing at communitiesskillfully represented by the large camera movements which already made the quality of Barbarous. Cregger travels his desolate sets as he writes his characters, focusing on the smallest detail betraying their true nature. What actually inscribe it in the line of masters of the genre (Carpenter is never far), provided perhaps drop some of his tics which could become gimmicks.