Antonio Campos' debut feature Afterschool takes aim at some pretty obvious targets: Prep School, YouTube, and our voyeur culture in general. And although the TV After School Specials of yore never tackled those particular topics, one could see Campos' movie, as daring as it may be stylistically, as slyly rebooting that much-maligned institution for today's indie film world -- pushing the envelope with scenes of violence and sex so strong that one reviewer in the screening I saw walked out before the end of the first scene.

The plot follows the After School Special book to a "T", making its theme clear in the first moments. Kicking off with a "buffering" symbol, and shots of YouTube style footage both funny (a baby laughs every time he bonks his head), and terrifying (Saddam Hussein is executed), the camera finally settles on Robert (Ezra Miller), who's masturbating in his prep school dorm room to porn footage laced with just a bit of the old ultra violence. From there, the plot takes its time establishing Rob's world. He's kind of interested in hanging out and doing drugs with his roommate Dave (Jeremy Allen White), slightly more interested in making out with and engaging in a little harmless auto-erotic asphyxiation with potential girlfriend Amy (Addison Timlin). But more than both of those things, Rob is interested in video. About three quarters of the way through the film, Rob tells a guidance counselor that he likes short video clips. "I like moments that are real," says Rob, and that statement crystallizes what works brilliantly in (and also ultimately torpedoes) Campos's film.

Afterschool, at its center, features the grisly deaths of a pair of twins, caught on video by Rob as he captures B-roll for a documentary about his school. On the video, the twins stumble into a stairwell in one of Rob's shots, screaming and covered in blood. Rob, back to the camera, slowly approaches the twins. It appears that he's trying to help one up, but he ends up cradling her in his arms as she dies. The adults (cops, teachers, parents) do a cursory investigation: "Why didn't Rob call for help?" they ask, and are satisfied with the answer: "I don't know." As an audience, however, we know something else is up. It's just a matter of time before the other shoe drops.

And when that shoe does drop, it doesn't so much hit the floor with a thud, as dangle on screen for a little bit by one of its laces. Unfortunately, this is the reality of filming a neo-after school special: We get what Campos is going for all along. As a writer, he has a long way to go. Luckily for him, he also happens to be an exceptional director. This is one of the boldest debuts of a new director since Darren Aronofsky's Pi -- an announcement that a confident new voice in American cinema is creating new images and ways of telling stories that we've never seen before. And visually, that's exactly where Campos and DP Jody Lee Lipes make their mark. The film is entirely shot, it becomes clear much later on, the way Rob would shoot a film -- in slow, almost too slow, careful pans. A depth of field so shallow, sometimes only a poster halfway through the frame is in focus. Heads half out of frame, or shots far too close to a character's face. It's almost like the first-person shooter of indie films; Campos even frames some shots over Rob's shoulder and lets them go on for minutes at a time, without ever letting us glimpse his face.

Where Pi put us squarely in the mind of a man going mad from math, Afterschool puts us in the mind of a typical teenage boy. And what we find there will most likely make many viewers massively uncomfortable. To others, visually at least, it will reveal the work of an artist who's willing to break the rules of cinema for the better.