Sharkflei Your blood may run cold, but you now find yourself pinioned to the story.

Brenda The plot isn't so bad, but the pace of storytelling is too slow which makes people bored. Certain moments are so obvious and unnecessary for the main plot. I would've fast-forwarded those moments if it was an online streaming. The ending looks like implying a sequel, not sure if this movie will get one

Zlatica One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

Ginger Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

vladp6 I rarely review films. But this time I'm going to do that. The film is bad, really bad. I can hardly call it a film at all. Those who give praises and high ratings to this film should be put in that school as a sacrifice for wasting our time. There is absolutely nothing watchable, nothing happens until the last 10 minutes of the film. Believe me, what you are going to watch is just a first- or third-person walk along the corridors of the school. Camera on a shoulder of an operator follows one person walking from behind for 5 minutes, then another person for 5 minutes. Most of the time these persons are silent, sometimes they give comments, sometimes they meet someone and the camera switches to someone else. Nothing, absolutely nothing happens. Why there are so positive reviews, what people like in this film is beyond my comprehension. After 10 minutes of this torture, I've already wanted to switch it off, but then I thought may be there will be something else, may be the characters will start acting or at least talking, it couldn't be that people give 7.2 rating for nothing! Another 10 minutes of walking along the corridors of the school, now the same scenes and same walking but with different people, scenes started to repeat themselves. I've started feeling like someone was fooling me into watching this camera play. Another 10 minutes of walking the same corridors again and again made me angry. I've eventually fast forwarded to the last 15 minutes to see what's all this fuss about. After suffering 5 minutes of the same walking, two students bought guns and armour on-line, received them by post, kissed each other in a shower, dressed like rembos and went shooting everyone in that school, just for fun, as they said to each other. I couldn't understand their motives, because the creators of this "film" did not care about any plot and about making the characters to talk. So, do you want to tell me that just because of the last 10 minutes of heartless shooting everyone in the school this film is worse 7.2 rating???

maymaymonarch This movie... I probably shouldn't write this review, because I'm in English and I'm not ready to fully process what I just saw. This movie is not going to make you taller, it will not give you an A in all of your classes, it probably won't change your outlook on life, but in light of the world we live in now, with constant terrorist attacks and brutal violence between religions, beliefs, worldviews, etc. this is quite an interesting look at it... even 15 years later. Many people will swear that this movie says nothing and does nothing, but in all honesty, I think that's the point. It doesn't seem like anyone was trying to put a message in here, but it was more of an event. Think of it like someone just standing and saying, "Hello, I'm standing here." It does not try to justify what it does or what is shown and it does not try to condemn what is shown either. It's just THERE. Take it or leave it. The violence is disturbing, and I'm one of those people that watches gore and violence as much as possible for fun. I think it's because it seems real, more real than real life would present it, because just like the movie, it's just there. It's hard to say much about a movie that doesn't say much itself, but anyone that watches this will have one of two reactions, they'll love it or hate it. I happened to love it, and I hope anyone reading this does too.

petrelet Many U.S. school massacres have gone by since 2003, and they haven't made this film seem dated or less relevant.This film is a very bold achievement. It is filmed in a real school building with a cast mostly composed of real non-professional teenagers. We can't help but react to them emotionally. Some are irritating, some are pitiable, some are admirable for one or another reason. We follow them on long walks around the long corridors of this well-equipped school, we observe some of the minutiae of their day. The timelines of the characters are presented non-linearly; they loop over each other like a spool of film that has been allowed to unreel in a pile. And then some of them die, because there are school shootings in this country.The title "Elephant" was borrowed from a British short film by Alan Clarke, which concentrated on assassinations and terror killings in Ireland during the 1980's. There are some stylistic similarities - a lot of long walks, a lot of steadicam work - but the two films are actually very different works in tone and focus. The Clarke film is ALL assassinations. Clarke deliberately refuses to give any of his many shootings a political context or rationale, but he also declines to provide any matrix of ordinary life. In contrast, Van Sant's "Elephant" is very much about that ordinary life, and about how terrible it is that it gets abruptly cut off.People ask why students take guns and go out and kill lots of people. Some of the blurbs I have seen for "Elephant" unconsciously, and incautiously, adopt the "bullied teen" narrative. Some bullied teens may sometimes take violent revenge, either on their agemates or on the system, but that's not we actually see in Van Sant's film, and in fact I believe he deliberately undercuts this kind of facile explanation. There is only one instance of bullying on screen of one of the killers - some glop is thrown at him. The other killer accuses the principal of having mistreated him, but we didn't see it ourselves.Meanwhile, other kids whom we see in the course of the day actually deal with injustice and neglect and bullying with much more resilience. And a lot of things are going on in the killers' lives that don't involve bullying. Eric is into gun culture. Alex is frustrated that he can't get that piano piece right. Probably there are a lot of frustrated kids around the world, but in our country they can get guns awfully easily. (At this point someone will call it a "goof" that they apparently order guns by mail or package delivery, but this is a technicality.) And - bottom line - Alex really just seems to like killing and terrifying people.Van Sant, who not only wrote and directed this picture but also gets editing honors, gets full auteur credit for the enterprise, but there are a couple of places where I think he could have used a second opinion. Let's just say it - I think the "Benny" episode was odd. I don't mean that it's odd that it blows up movie conventions, that was good. (Ebert singled this out as a memorable point.) But I think it stands out, maybe more than in 2003, that this African-American student, the only one with a named segment, got no lines or personal background. Also I think the way the film ends on Alex's sadistic little gaming was a false note. Not that Alex wouldn't have wanted to act that way, but that kind of lady-or-tiger-or-both ending has been done a lot. But still, on the whole, this is a pretty amazing work.

adbeer-47919 "Elephant" is basically a film made for testing how to use the camera. It has a very shallow plot and the main psychopaths in the film don't have an obvious reason to shoot up the school at the end. Although it is very very well made in filming. It has a LOT of long shots in the film that were very impressive to look at and the cinematography was a lot like how "Son of Saul" filmed like. He always found a way to make the shot interesting instead of typical. Looking back on the film I think that if the film was filmed and presented typically then the film would be pretty bad. Another defining quality of the film was of course the soundtrack. One of the psychopaths plays and listens to Beethoven. (Sounds familiar?) Anyways there was one scene where a character was walking casually in the school hallway and "Moonlight Sonata" was playing in the background and the scene was never really that dull or boring. I mean c'mon who doesn't feel relaxed listening to Beethoven. The film has three segments to it in my opinion. the first is filming the normal and casual lives of a bunch of teenagers in a high school which was somewhat captivating. The next is that one scene happens and lots of people are in that scene and it then tells the perspective of what happens until the shooting for each character. And lastly for the last 20 minutes is the shooting of the school. Which was pretty shocking for the way it was filmed. There were flaws though. The acting was pretty bad especially when people died in the end. There was literally one guy who was walking down the hall almost kind of casually, and he walks behind one of the psychos and of course he gets shot. The blond haired kid saw the psychos going into the school and tried to tell people but the way he reacted was like it didn't matter that much. There isn't really any development of the characters or the story at all. It was like they were just there because ultimately it is a film to experiment with what a camera can do.