So right.
This was great. I mean, you made me look at it from an other perspective. Before i hated those guys, a LOT. But they needed help. So now I just hate them.
Reviews for "Autumn Tree"
most disturbing
the film its self has its own nature , such as BULLYING can get out of hand , the cock of the gun as it shoots you in the heart , collumbine , the victim of obbsesive bullying's dream , this was a case of BAD chemistry , this film was a break through , the score says so , even though you cant help but feel sorry for the kids that bullied them , it was evil , and they paid , i guess GOD left it at that
...
this was the first time i had seen any accounts of the columbine, i had heard of it, but this was a first.my review will be in two parts.
Flash animation (no story):
it was great. people need to realize, a 10 does not mean "looks exactly like real humans" the stlye you guys used worked great. music worked also, and was all around great
Story:
one thing i noticed (during the shooting in the cafetieria) was that you might see this exact kind of thing in an action/voilence movie (refering to the physical killing, not the idea or motives), and not even blink. to anyone who says you should've focused more on what led up to the incident, more than just being bullied, you should either remember teen angst, be in it, or niether (and if so, what are you doing watching this?). i have, on many occasions, thought about how i could kill every person in the room. or when I'm walking back to my seat, i think to myself, "i could snap each one of their necks right now. of course, I'd never really do that, my life is better at home than school. i know other reviews have said they were neglected by thier parents, which is on of the factors that "helped" thier situation escalate to what it did.
during the "do you believe in god" conversation (i don't know if it actually happened or not) i expected them to say "if you mom and aunt became nazis/killed everyone/jumped off a cliff ect. ect. ... would you?"
i give zero on violence because the violence scale (i think) is more about entertaining violence.
Well done
This flash was very well made. A few scenes reminded me of Elephant, but I can see why, due to the fact that Elephant was based on the Columbine shootings. The split screen part was excellently done, and I liked the use of music.
Eh...
Not blam-worthy, but pretty damn overrated. First off, that blond-haired kid had a dopey grin on half the time. Second, while you guys do give credit to "Elephant" for inspiration, and thereby base a lot of your facts on it's interpretation of the events, you seem to forget something: "Elephant" was a Hollywood movie, and therefore was written to entertain; things shown in that movie were not necessarily fact, and neither were many things in your movie.
Now that I'm done with my unbiased review, here's my biased part: You claim to have done extensive research on the subject, and yet you can't understand why these kids would do something like this? What the fuck? Understanding and agreeing with are completely different things. I don't personally agree at all with what those kids did, nor do I seek to justify their actions. But even I can understand why they think they were right in doing what they did.
First off, these kids lived in a close-minded, racist town, something the media conveniently forgot to report, so everyone could act surprised when it was revealed that the kids had pictures of Adolf Hitler on their walls. Second, not only did the kids parents work for a weapons manufacturing company, but they also neglected their children to such a ridiculous extent, they didn't even know that the kids even had said posters on their walls, let alone all the ammunition/explosives-making equipment that was strewn in plain view. The point here is, you're a product of your environment; what these kids did was obviously twisted and wrong, but did anyone step in to help them before this happened? Note that the letters retrieved after the killings blamed not only the students, but family and teachers, too. In other words, life shit on these kids, and not even the grown-ups would put a stop to what was going on. Some reports say that certain adults (teachers included) even perpetrated this shit, allowed it to happen in various forms or another, without paying it any mind.
In other words, the filmmakers should have spent more time discussing how these events lead up to the killings, and what shaped and motivated the killers. They were way sparse on the things that mattered most. This movie, through it's crappy pacing and lack of substance, makes it seem like the kids were just punched around a bit, found each other, then decided to overcome the odds together by shooting everyone. That is not how it happened. The problems ran much deeper than a bruised cheek and bloody nose, and this should have been explained more thoroughly.
The music was probably the redeeming factor here, as it complied nicely with the overall tone.
A slightly-less-than-mediocre flick, overall.