The internet is turning today’s kids from active participants in life to dispassionate onlookers. Or so Antonio Campos’s pared-down and non-judgmental drama would have us believe.

It opens with a montage of online clips ranging from the trivial (skateboarder stacking it) to the serious (Saddam's execution) to – inevitably - the prurient (film-it-yourself porn). Welcome to the world of teenage preppie Rob (Miller).

To Rob, girls are just the talking bits attached to bare legs. Connection is not really his thing, though he does make an effort with Amy (Addison Timlin). She makes it worth his while.

Being more intimate with images, Rob joins the school’s AV club. Skipping class to wander the corridors with his camera, he is suddenly confronted by the sight of the pretty Talbert twins in considerable distress.

Instead of helping them however, he carries on filming. Moments later, both girls are dead.

It’s quickly determined that contaminated drugs are to blame. So the only mystery here is Rob’s behaviour.

What emerges is a disturbing picture of teenage numbness and social ineptitude. Campos heightens the awkwardness with long, unflinching takes, made even more effective by Miller and Timlin's admirably un-self-conscious performances.

They represent a generation whose view of life is formed in downloadable chunks: anonymous; disparate; distracted.  

Inhabiting the hormonally uncertain ground covered by Richard Linklater’s Dazed And Confused and Elephant, Gus Van Sant’s reconstruction of a Columbine-like massacre, Afterschool presents modern youth in a cold light.

It’s difficult to like but even harder to dismiss.

Elliott Noble