“3 Weeks Later” review: A high school field trip goes off the rails in a clever but sadistic Serb shocker

The children are not well, or even in their minds in Serbian drama After 3 weeks. This subtly crafted but lively exercise revolves around a high school trip to the countryside, which turns very dark when almost everyone bullies one kid in their midst: the boy Zuza (Jovan Jenek), who happens to be the best friend of another kid who was all bullied into suicide three weeks ago, hence the title.

Imagine a particularly sinister adaptation of Lord of the Flies Or a remake of Gus Van Sant Elephant But directed by Gaspar Noe. In fact, there’s even an extended scene in which the teens get high and dance to techno tunes, recalling Noe’s song climax. Unfortunately, 3 weeks It’s way less fun and has an unfortunately hollow final stretch. Most importantly, for all of this, director Miroslav Terzic (Redemption Street, Stitches) Based loosely on actual events and discussing peer violence with its young cast, the film presents an absurdly bleak portrait of Generation Z that doesn’t ring true.

The picture begins with a hammering visual metaphor: a building in a residential area is fully engulfed in flames, but there are no firefighters on the scene, no victims screaming from the windows, and not even any onlookers staring except for Zuza. He doesn’t even seem too bothered as hell. It seems that Zuza has had enough of watching the fire, so he heads off with his backpack, and is joined on the way by his classmate Daria (Angela Alaverevich), who expresses her surprise that he is going on a school trip to Bulgaria so soon after “what happened.” This traumatic three-week inciting incident — in which Zuza’s friend Andrea kills himself in order to escape the bullying of his schoolmates — is only gradually explained as the film unfolds, with nasty little details dropped like breadcrumbs along the way.

It turns out that Zoza was also somewhat culpable in Andrija’s death, even though he was nowhere near those who beat and humiliated the late teenager until he couldn’t take it anymore. As the kids sit on the rented trainer in small groups and subgroups, it becomes clear that they have decided that Zuza will be the next victim, partly because he knows what happened to Andrea and partly just because he is quiet and a bit of a loner and not a sociopath like the rest of the class.

At a rest stop along the way, sociopath boss Milos Bogdanovic (Andrija Markovic), who has been banned from the cruise while the circumstances of Andrea’s death are investigated, sneaks aboard the ship so he can be with his queen bee girlfriend, Milica (Klara Karolic). Somehow, neither the two teachers accompanying the trip, the flighty Viktorija (Tihana Lazovic) and the lumpy Markus (Branislav Trifunović), nor the bus driver notice Bogdanovic’s arrival. His presence is only discovered when the bus is forced to stop on the road due to a road blocked by a landslide, puncturing a tire while trying to turn on the narrow mountain road.

Perhaps this was all also intended as more visual metaphor. To be sure, there’s very little allegorical about the way the screenplay, by Terzic, Vladimir Arsenijevic, and Bojan Violetek, has Viktorija and Markus neglect their noise-canceling headphones as they go to bed at the sprawling, remote hotel where the entire party has checked into. After spending some time complaining to each other about how terrible kids are these days, they both make themselves as useful as cockroach nipples by optionally closing their ears. With no adult supervision (the hotel staff is also mysteriously absent, as it’s supposed to be the season finale), the teens raid the beer supply and begin stalking Zuza, who has been lured by the only person they trust.

As disgusting as the ensuing scenes are—particularly one in which a child is brutalized offscreen while Milica swipes her phone with blank affect, complaining that she’s bored when the atrocity is over—there’s no denying that Terzic and his team have skill. Zuza’s chase through the forest and caves outside the hotel is well-crafted, spatially coherent, and shot by cinematographer Damjan Radovanovic and his team using just enough light and the right filters to let us know what’s going on. However, this probably wouldn’t be even faintly evident on a home entertainment system, let alone the portable devices that kids like the ones we see here prefer to watch entertainment these days.

But this is not a film for teenagers, or for anyone with more than a passing acquaintance with the youth of this generation. Things may be worse in Serbia, which a generation ago suffered from a war that left deep scars, but it is inconceivable that this group, even every single child, could be so pathologically cruel and morally bereft. Likewise, it seems highly unlikely that the next morning each of them would be so rigidly hungry, passed out in piles of puppies in their clothes with not a drop of vomit in sight, that they wouldn’t wake up and hear the ominous things happening. Is it another kind of metaphor that Terzic suddenly cuts to black instead of showing us the climactic combustion we’ve been expecting? Maybe, but really who cares?