Apart from its skilfully composed group of main characters, all of whom are so easy identified from one another that you may feel you've seen this film before, a major part of the Volcano High school's appeal is the nightmarishly austere high-contrast cinematography, using the bleach-bypass process (or something of that sort), so familiar to cineastes since David Fincher's Se7en made this peculiar 'look' the epitome of big screen cool. This gives everything a hyper-real allure and makes the otherworldly scenario believable. Another outstanding point worthy of mention is the witty splicing of hectically paced, and wildly overacted, comicbook kung fu academy battles with the sparser iconography of spaghetti western styled confrontations. Add to this a generous helping of dojo competition, romantic teen melodrama, and a conspiracy of educational propaganda (considering this film's cultural sources, it's hard not to look for a political subtext here, but none such is readily apparent), as the megalomaniacal Vice-Principal calls upon the combative services of five masters of discipline to deal with unruly kids, and you have a truly exciting spoof of Blackboard Jungle (1955). Ah, Grange Hill was never like this!

The story is a little funky and hard to follow at times, but as far as we can tell, it's basically about a kid who transfers to a school where the students and teachers use fancy-ass Matrix-esque martial arts constantly. He seems to be holding back some type of super powers, and allows himself and his friends to be bullied because he's afraid to use his powers. By the end--we know, big surprise--he finally learns how to use his powers and there's a big light show and a bunch of cheezeball CGI effects to prove to the audience just how powerful he really is.

The story, such that it is, is really too boring to hold up an entire movie. The cast is mostly appealing, and there are definitely some good performances here--in particular, some surprisingly good physical comedy--but it's painfully obvious that the director was just phoning it in, letting the CGI guys run the show. Almost every shot of a human actor looks like they're in front of a green screen, they don't interact naturally with each other or their surroundings. This leaves the entire movie with a detached, soulless feeling. The big effects aren't impressive, they're just the typical "guy throws huge ball of 'energy' at opponent, and opponent flies a few hundred feet back only to get up, wipe some blood from his mouth, and look up with vengeful determination at the camera" variety. You'll often see us praising Centro for their subtle digital effects in films like Bangkok Dangerous or The Eye; Volcano High has gone the opposite route, with bigger, tackier, flashier effects that have no style or class. Check out the final fight sequence: it's raining heavily, but if you look at our hero's head, it's clear that the rain is not interacting with him at all, it really just looks like crap. The physical effects are also marginal, mostly explosions of water that seem out of place, or people flying across a room clearly on some type of clunky wire rig.

What else is there to say? The fate of the entire film was clearly set upon the shoulders of a few guys with some kick-ass computers, and unfortunately, those guys or their computers weren't up to the task. Effects like these aren't enough to carry an entire movie; and when you strip your actors of so many opportunities to interact with other actors and real physical locations by filming them on an empty sound stage in front of a green screen, you're going to seriously hamper their ability to make a connection with the audience. And when the effects you get by doing so are so run-of-the-mill, the trade-off of organic quality for digital flair is clearly a losing proposition.

Another problem with the directing is that the last 30 minutes or so, the director goes on a split-screen frenzy, and it creates a really tacky, annoying look that serves no purpose and looks dated and awkward here. It's also annoying that we keep seeing the same exact shots over and over throughout the movie: a guy falls to his knees and then falls on his face into the camera; a guy gets knocked down and then gets back up and looks up into the camera; the camera swirls around someone for no particular reason; bla ba bla. This movie is trying to emulate so many other movies it forgot to be a movie itself.

So, in conclusion, just re-watch The Matrix instead.