The School Duel debuts in a limited NY theatrical release on April 24, followed by LA on May 1, with further expansion to follow.
By Elazar Abrahams
Written and directed by Todd Wiseman Jr. in his debut feature, The School Duel is set in a near-future dystopian Florida, where a society very recognizable to our own has taken more than a few wrong turns. It’s an excellent indie film, tight and stylized, signaling that Wiseman’s career will be one to watch.
The intense premise is that in a world where gun control is illegal, school shootings have become so frequent that the government responds with a state-sponsored televised Battle Royale-esque competition where young men shoot at each other to the death.
While maintaining the big dystopian action concept, the movie impressively controls a small narrative but still gives the audience a sense of the wider world collapsing around the characters.
The movie is shot in black-and-white, framed in a square aspect ratio, and it’s beautifully composed. The aesthetic supports the story. This United States feels drained and decayed, a place where normal life has been bleached out by fear and propaganda. The worldbuilding is subtle but constant, and the filmmakers pull off what many low-budget flicks struggle with: they suggest the larger society through small details in sets and dialogue without ever needing to leave the characters’ immediate orbit.
The film’s emotional and narrative weight rests on one actor, and the kid delivers. Kue Lawrence plays Sammy, a tormented 13-year-old who is recruited, and in some ways seduced, by the promise of notoriety and meaning inside the twisted spectacle. Lawrence is excellent and carries the entire 90-minute runtime film with such a tense and credible performance.
In the span of less than a month, The School Duel is the third movie with a theatrical release that focuses on school shootings and youth violence. First came Our Hero, Balthazar, which we reviewed on this site, as well as Zendaya-starring The Drama that inspired many a think piece. The School Duel is the strongest and most pointed of the bunch. It doesn’t just use its violence as a shock. It interrogates what violence does to young people in a world where the most graphic footage is just one swipe away. It highlights how our ideals of justice can be warped with alarming speed when society teaches and sells violences.
The back half becomes more action-forward, and that’s the one place where you can sense some beginner’s chops, not because it’s incompetent, but because the film’s strengths are so clearly in tone, character, and worldbuilding that the more kinetic sequences feel slightly less assured than the quieter psychological dread. But even then, the ambition is impressive, and the film never loses its grip on what it’s actually trying to say.
If you have the opportunity to see this in theaters, it’s absolutely worth the trip.
I give The School Duel an A-.
TV and City 