A good concept, but mediocre execution. So these 5 high schoolers are stuck in the empty school and must pick one of them to die so that the other 4 can survive. The voting concept is obviously super interesting. And it's interesting to see them try to find a way out of school. But besides this all the points of the episode fall flat and don't work in this format.
There is the prototypical hot girl, the religious girl, the jock, the school shooter, and the nerd. Basically everything here is a caricature. That can work if you make fun of it and play up the comedic element. Instead they go full out cringe fest with the points and ideas as everyone is overly serious yet also silly as we know these badly written characters already. All characters act exactly the way you'd expect a flat pointless character to act like. There are some good elements here though. The religious girl is a really great character and she is calm and believable in her role. So she's a blast to watch. Unfortunately not much happens with her. Instead mainly the jock, nerd and school shooter try to outscream each other by shouting their flat character dialogue. The school shooter then votes for a person while the others refuse to vote. They get mad at him and find a gun on him plus their photos in his backpack. Clearly showing that he planned to kill them.
There are some good ideas here and the empty school is a really cool setting. The issue is how silly it all ends up being. We could have seen social manipulation to win votes or some deeper idea. The school shooter concept just doesn't work because it's an arrogant boy in black clothes. It's not a realistic school shooter. It's some sarcastic loser who at the end votes for another person to die - so clearly he cares way more about his own life than all the others and seemingly wouldn't go on some crazy suicide mission. This caricature of a school shooter as an emotional loser wearing black clothes is too lazy. School shooters are proactive and violent. This one is a meager loser. So who is he even?
In this episode they are all let go at the end and the school shooter gives his gun to the principal. Again illustrating how "just talking it out" will make such a person understand the wrong he is about to do. Yeah... right. Good job Hollywood.
Besides the plot not working there are the huge issues with characters constantly shouting and behaving in silly predictable ways. For example, the hot girl talks and shouts about being attractive/popular and that is all cringe in itself. But her terrible acting makes it so much worse. So you have crappy script writers, crappy actors and a crappy director making them all shout their lines as loud as possible. Only the concept is good.
Practically, I like the ideas here, but the execution is terrible. People who grew up with this kind of B 90's TV will find it cute. But most modern viewers will notice too much of the crap and bad acting to fully enjoy it. Even though it does have that cute and innocent 90's style to it that is for sure very enjoyable today where everything needs to be super serious and political.
There is the prototypical hot girl, the religious girl, the jock, the school shooter, and the nerd. Basically everything here is a caricature. That can work if you make fun of it and play up the comedic element. Instead they go full out cringe fest with the points and ideas as everyone is overly serious yet also silly as we know these badly written characters already. All characters act exactly the way you'd expect a flat pointless character to act like. There are some good elements here though. The religious girl is a really great character and she is calm and believable in her role. So she's a blast to watch. Unfortunately not much happens with her. Instead mainly the jock, nerd and school shooter try to outscream each other by shouting their flat character dialogue. The school shooter then votes for a person while the others refuse to vote. They get mad at him and find a gun on him plus their photos in his backpack. Clearly showing that he planned to kill them.
There are some good ideas here and the empty school is a really cool setting. The issue is how silly it all ends up being. We could have seen social manipulation to win votes or some deeper idea. The school shooter concept just doesn't work because it's an arrogant boy in black clothes. It's not a realistic school shooter. It's some sarcastic loser who at the end votes for another person to die - so clearly he cares way more about his own life than all the others and seemingly wouldn't go on some crazy suicide mission. This caricature of a school shooter as an emotional loser wearing black clothes is too lazy. School shooters are proactive and violent. This one is a meager loser. So who is he even?
In this episode they are all let go at the end and the school shooter gives his gun to the principal. Again illustrating how "just talking it out" will make such a person understand the wrong he is about to do. Yeah... right. Good job Hollywood.
Besides the plot not working there are the huge issues with characters constantly shouting and behaving in silly predictable ways. For example, the hot girl talks and shouts about being attractive/popular and that is all cringe in itself. But her terrible acting makes it so much worse. So you have crappy script writers, crappy actors and a crappy director making them all shout their lines as loud as possible. Only the concept is good.
Practically, I like the ideas here, but the execution is terrible. People who grew up with this kind of B 90's TV will find it cute. But most modern viewers will notice too much of the crap and bad acting to fully enjoy it. Even though it does have that cute and innocent 90's style to it that is for sure very enjoyable today where everything needs to be super serious and political.