pulpsong

Alex Lawther was truly brilliant, as everyone else here seems to agree, but the film is ultimately quite forgettable. The proof: I realised about 20 minutes into it that I had watched it before. Although the three "ghost stories" are genuinely pretty creepy, especially the first, the special effects etc. Are a little silly at times. Even though the craziness is all explained at the end - which is something I normally appreciate in horror movies - this somehow isn't enough to give one the sense of time well-spent watching this film. Particularly when one has watched it not only once, but twice.

An incredibly moving film. I have watched a lot of films about disturbed children as it's one of my favourite themes. Most of them fall into one of two categories - those depicting children who have clearly been failed by society and everyone around them ("Fish Tank" comes to mind), and those involving the idea of the "bad seed" ("We Need to Talk About Kevin"). System Crasher manages to portray a child who frightens us and yet is incredibly vulnerable at the same time. Like her educators, we long to protect her, and at the same time we struggle to believe that things can ever be OK for her. Needless to say, this is an incredible performance from the child actor.

We see brief moments of jubilation during her repeated attempts to run away from her carers, but then moments of extreme solitude, when we are faced with the anguish of a child without a home, without anyone who loves her or will worry about her if she doesn't return. There are some rather unrealistic scenes, as other reviewers have mentioned, including the strangely spacious and luxurious apartment Benni's mother apparently occupies, and the idea that an educator would be allowed to spend three weeks alone with her in a forest. There are also extremely touching scenes like the one with the echoes, and the moment Mrs Bafané crumbles to the floor in tears and it is Benni who comforts her. In much the same way that we wait in vain for her to pull herself together and reassure the girl, the film also kind of leaves us hanging, but I believe it is one of the best of its kind.

One of my favourite films ever, set in one of my favourite cities. Intriguing and thought-provoking, I watched it a second time almost immediately, to see if I could pick up on any clues to help me understand the story line. (Another reviewer recommended counting the beer bottles, but I think he miscounted them!) The decision to portray the actors at the same age through different periods in time is obviously deliberate, and I think that ultimately this isn't meant to be a linear story, but more a study of how the past, present and future can co-exist within us. A drunken hook-up could change your life forever, or it could be so completely forgotten that years later you could meet the same person again and not even remember that you'd already met. This film is, I think, about the strangeness and poignancy of that reality.