Full Movie Reviews
Rating of
4/4
This one will leave you feeling cold inside
Matthew Brady - wrote on 03/24/2015
Don't let the title fool you. The movie doesn't have elephant in it, but it has a deep meaning to it that will make your feel like mash after thinking about it to long.
The story is about high school violence that unfolds on an ordinary school day, inside an American high school, filled with schoolwork, football, gossip and socializing. For each of the students we meet, high school is a different experience: stimulating, friendly, traumatic, lonely, hard.
Elephant is loosely based on the school shooting in 1999 known as Columbine High School massacre with the shooters Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold. When I say loosely I really mean loosely because this isn't base on a true story bullsh't that you always get in movies, no it's actually Gus Van Sant wanted to make a movie relating to …
Rating of
3.5/4
If he hollars, let him go.
The Film Rebel - wrote on 02/02/2011
With Elephant, Gus Van Sant has created a moving, at times disturbing, and very reallistic portrayal of High School life. Watching this film you could think to yourself "This could be my own high school." The film follows a diverse group of students around on a day that appears to be going normally. That is until it takes a turn for the tragic.
The film is loosely based on the Columbine Massacre and explores what could've happened on the day of the shootings. Our main protagonists in this case are Alex and Eric (Van Sant decided to have all the actors just use their real names for the characters they played). Their story shows them planning the shoot out, watching a video of Hitler, and even sharing a brief kiss.
Eric and Alex's story is just one of many intertwining story lines. …
Rating of
3/4
A subtle, saddening, and dreamlike experiance,
Bob Stone - wrote on 05/07/2009
Watching Gus Van Sant's Elephant raises the question,what would you have done or reacted like if you had been in Columbine on that fateful day? The film follows about a half dozen high school student going through with their daily routine, when suddenly their world explodes in thier face and for the first hour or so the film is fairly uneventful. Elephant has no intention of offering the viewer answers, it's one and only explanation is that sometimes human beings snap out and explode in fits of violent rage. During the extremly surreal finale one is as confused and out of the loop as anyone else would be, had they been in the situation. Whether you like the film or you must admit that it is pitchperfect in portraying the behaviors of real teens and because of this, when the horror begins …
Rating of
3.5/4
A cold and chilling drama
filmfan09 - wrote on 02/14/2009
This is a cold and chilling drama inspired by the massacre at Columbine High School. You can't call it a docu-drama , because it doesn't document or or dramatize. Instead it looks with a scary eye at the tragic murders as they unfold. There is no attempt to analyze or explain the shootings. In a quiet moment in the film, you just see the two killers.
The actors are Alex Frost and Eric Deulen, just ordinary kids. You never find out why they become killers. The movie tracks a day at the high school as Josh Robinson plays a kid who's late to school because his dad was too drunk to drive.
I amire Gus Van saint for making a empty picture with a rejection of conventional narrative. What makes this film so effective is that it's just a regular day at a high school, much like at …
Rating of
1.5/4
Elephant
Tia Maria - wrote on 06/28/2008
I didn't quite 'get' this movie. It's about some high school students, just in their everyday life. It was sad, in a bleak sortta way, which was weird, coz there wasn't much to it. I really liked the way Gus Van Sant showed the movie in the students different points of view, it made it really interesting. I was warned before I watched it that it would be a bit too 'deep' for me, and I guess they were right. But I gotta say, the movie finally came together near the end. Once the two guys came to the school, shooting everyone, it shows that however ordinary people's lives are, all these people are brought together, for one major event: their death. The simplicity at the start of the movie, can trick anyone, until you really think about it. The teenager has to take control when his dad is …
Rating of
4/4
Elephant
Franz Patrick - wrote on 12/24/2007
School shootings have become a trend, if you will. This movie stayed with me for a long time after watching it because it made me really sad and scared. Watching a film like this, especially hearing about school shootings in the news, really changes your outlook about high school. One must wonder what must go through the shooters' minds so that they could do something really horrible. But this movie took it to the next level: it merely observes instead of making judgment, which is all the more painful. I wish there was a way I can tell unhappy high school kids that things do get better and that they don't have to be miserable for the rest of their lives--that there is an escape, an alternative; that there's no need to result to violence because, in the end, if they do choose the path of …
