Inspired by the Columbine High School massacre, Gus Van Sant takes a dreamily unconventional approach to an explosive subject. Survivors of such high school slayings often recount the event as standing outside time or logic: It was like a dream, like time stood still. That’s exactly what the camerawork here captures. Gracefully orchestrated travelling shots drop us in and out of a seemingly routine high school day: gym class, conversations about after-school plans, lunchtime in the cafeteria, pockets of student cliques… The camera glides through hallways and around students like a hunter tracking its prey. And the randomness of what it shoots cleverly mirrors the arbitrariness and senselessness of the shocking violence to come.
– Dennis Sabourin