The Lesson

This was not executed well enough to be a movie.

The plot is basic, but it got convoluted quick with the flashbacks and torture teaching.

If I remember correctly, one of the students tortured was a decent kid.

The violence is poorly executed.

The whole thing dragged and was pointless.

Passing on a somewhat decent idea, the movie unfortunately does not take full advantage of its potential. If you like your torture movie and don't mind or rather cherish low budget movies that look better than the money that has been spent on it, than you are in for a treat. Unfortunately that is a very low bar.

And while I do salute any movie that makes the most of a very tiny and small budget, that does not take away the fact, that it has to be just judged by those merits. Especially if you have so many clichés thrown into the mix. There is gore and there is offensive material aplenty. Don't confuse trying to shock with wit though. Does it try to be witty? Yes. Does it succeed? No. I reckon someone did not do their homework properly ...

English teacher Mr Gale snaps and take revenge on the wayward yobs that torment him in class. This starts off as a reasonably interesting coming of age drama before suddenly plunging into torture porn. Sadly this is where it all goes downhill for the next hour or so. Yes, there is some gore, but it's certainly no Hostel. The problem is that the film tries to be smart, having the psychotic Mr Gale question his victims on the English dictionary & literature, and what it all means. This just seems to go on for ever & the temptation to hit the FFWD button was great! Could've have been better, certainly has a running time that is way too long. Apparently this British film had a budget of £5,700.000 but looks like one with a couple of noughts less. Disappointing & boring.

It only took 15 minutes into film for me hate both students... So whatever the teacher did torturing them was a treat for me..

Firstly .. this is torture porn! Its not revernge horror/gore, its about the torture..

Now, the movie itself has its ups and downs .. more downs though. The main story is simple .. but obscured by a totally unnecessary sideplot and relationship drama that adds little to nothing.

With that said, in my opinion .. this movie could have benefitted TREMENDOULY from removing this sideplot entirely .. and cutting runtime to a brief 1 hour .. cause i venture to say that the "joy" of the movie comes from the mainplot alone and not some overcoming of an abusive relationship.

So .. the main plot; taking revenge on students that .. by all means .. seem to "deserve it" .. students with no redeeming quality. So far, so good. The problem i had with this movie is that the teacher just wasnt a very good teacher. (speaking from the perspective of being a teacher myself) He certainly came across as idealistic and enthusiastic .. but not a good teacher.

The students on the other hand came across as just a bit "too rude" .. considering the portrait demographic, such behaviour is VERY hard to imagine .. (although i am not familiar with the english demographic that well, but when i compare it to the nordic education, such student behaviour is simply in the realm of fantasy)

There was a lot of blood .. but not that much gore as most scenes that would "show" gore tended to obscure the actual wounding. So you are left with the acting (not too bad). Actually, i liked the performance of all the main cast .. although not too demanding, i would think .. it was still well done.

I cannot quite recommend this movie, because of the utterly boring sideplot that creates long periods of boredom in the movie .. and the rather unsatisfactory ending.