"A bit."
Set in a presciently pandemic-ravaged England and focusing on a private boys' school, this film surprises from the outset by confounding expectations to a large extent. Naughty-lad Lee is expelled, but he returns to the school to wait for his mother, reuniting with best-friend Mac and a small band of other pupils and staff as the situation gets more desperate and they find themselves in trouble with surviving locals. Grief and survival are dealt with head-on and uncompromisingly, often giving the film a similar tone to TV's Survivors, with Oscar Kennedy and Liam Lau Fernandez giving strong and creditable performances as the two young leads. The film makes points about gender and toxic masculinity but does so as a part of the overall narrative. Director Milburn handles both the dramatic scenes and action set-pieces extremely effectively, especially the no-hold-barred final stand-off which is very well constructed and really delivers on the action front. Some viewers have criticised the major lurches in character and the ending itself (which does feature a major shock moment), but in context this story is about "little boys" (as the movie puts it) thrown into impossibly-challenging situations. Overall, School's Out Forever is not the movie you would probably expect and it is surprisingly effective.
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