Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Cast: Oscar Kennedy, Liam Lau Fernandez, Anthony Head, Alex Macqueen, Steve Oram, Jasmine Blackborow, Samantha Bond, Max Rapheal, Sebastian Croft, Richard Elfyn, Harry Tuffin, Freya Parks, Gordon Alexander, Alex Blake, Ben Dilloway, Jayden Elijah, Arun Bassi, Stellan Powell, James Corrigan, Connie Hyde.
At some point in our lives, we have all prayed for the moment that the school bell rings denoting that it is the end of the day, the final moment of term, or the excessive relief that comes when it is the signal for end of the year, when the days stretch out before us with the knowledge that nothing must be done. However, when School’s Out Forever, there is the fear of joining a world that we are not ready for, the agony that we might be alone in a sea cast adrift without the support network of those we have come to rely upon.
The end of the world scenario has been arguably over done by cinema, the moment when we realise as a species that we are not all conquering, but subject to the diseases and the viruses that we cannot control or eradicate; however, on occasion there comes a film that bucks the trend of expectancy, one that thankfully has not gone down the root of the perpetual zombie apocalypse and which places the world in peril, but one that digs into a deeper emotion, that of fear of surviving an unknown plague that cannot be seen, one in which the devastation of humanity is counteracted by how we react and the choices we make when teenagers are left in charge.
In an apocalyptical reimagining of work that watchfully draws parallels with the dystopian structure of William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, Oliver Milburn’s screenplay of Scott K. Andrews’ novel, School’s Out Forever is comedy horror that is wonderfully not played out for the laughs that you would expect, but instead is rooted within the mechanism of the shock that you should expect to feel as you place yourself in the shoes of rebellious private schoolboy Lee Keegan, played with satisfaction by Oscar Kennedy, and the ruins and breakdown of society, leaving remnants and various factions in its place.
The allusion to Lord of the Flies comes with the precise detail of storytelling provided by the author and the script writer, the way they mould the survivors with attentive progress, and deliberately destroy any decency that you may have spotted in some of the characters as they become desperate to prove their worth to stay alive.
Such a premise is a clever ploy, it draws the viewer in to the game of survival, and with trustworthy and persuasive performances by the likes of Samantha Bond, Alex Macqueen, Jasmine Blackborow, Freya Parks and Liam Lau Fernandez, School’s Out Forever is a British film of note, worthy of time, and one that refuses to bow to the inevitable comparison of other films that have gone down the dystopian route of late; preferring instead to draw upon a different dynamic, that of the descent of the adolescent when left in charge of a community.
Open minded, constructive, enjoyable, School’s Out Forever is a film that captures the imagination and asks pertinent questions during its screen time.
Ian D. Hall