2:37

Aroview: Topical and wrenching youth drama links six Australian teenagers to an unspeakable tragedy, unraveling with assured and precocious confidence their involvement and complicity in one day's shocking events.

Though ostensibly measured in its treatment of suicide, drug abuse and other teen misdemeanors, the heavy-handed stylisation makes for a queasy combination, teetering between earnest concern for the subject and die-hard exploitation. Not an easy watch, first-timer Thalluri's clever narrative juggling act goes some way to appeasing the film's overwrought spectacle of high school hell.

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