SCHOOL’S OUT FOREVER | FILM REVIEW
Dir: Oliver Milburn (15, 105 mins)
A superbly entertaining British thriller with some scary real-life prescience, this is a grimly efficient blend of If, Lord Of The Flies and Assault On Precinct 13. Based on Scott K Andrews’ YA novel, School’s Out Forever has Oscar Kennedy as Lee – a joker at St Marks boarding school whose antics with fellow head pupil Mark, played by Liam Lau Fernandez, have gone a step too far. Taking the hit for hiding drugs for his friend, Lee is expelled and heads home with his father, only to hear news of a flu-like super pandemic sweeping the country. Only people with O Negative blood are able to survive the ravages of the disease, and three weeks later the world is in chaos.
With his father now dead and people attempting to ransack his home, Lee’s mother, stationed in Iraq with the military, encourages him to flee back to boarding school. There, he finds staff and pupils decimated, leaving Alex Mcqueen’s Mr Bates and Matron Jasmine Blackborrow in charge. Mark has survived, though, along with a rag-tag group of varyingly aged kids. When a man and child on the run from vengeful pursuers seek shelter at the school, all manner of violence erupts – in particular a grizzly death by school chair.
In the wake of any sort of social order, new groups have arisen laying down the law, amongst them Samantha Bond’s local parish council leader. Her daughter, played by Freya Parks, was one of the gun-toting people who invaded the school, and after a frenzied melee has been left paralysed. A standoff ensues, with Lee caught up in the middle as his former friend Mark becomes powercrazed, ready to defend the school at all costs against the tooled-up parish councillor and her makeshift army… whilst also struggling with his crush on Matron.
Often darkly funny and gruesome, this has a real satirical bite, both at boarding school structures and Little England mentality, not to mention the darker recesses of humanity. The violence is uncomfortable and brutal and no child is spared, the film having a real edge and tension as the preventable bloodshed escalates. Director Oliver Milburn keeps things shocking, funny and gripping, making this caustic thriller a mostly unpredictable triumph and grittier than its title would suggest.
Released digitally on Mon 15 Feb, and on DVD/Blu-ray on Mon 12 Apr. Info: here
words KEIRON SELF
