The two leads of this film do an adequate to excellent job all things considered. But that's really about the nicest thing I can say about this movie.The makers of this film either were trying to make a piece of blatant propaganda or were sincerely interested in giving a dynamic presentation of a complex issue but fell flat on their face. I'd like to give them the benefit of the doubt and hope it was the latter. I will say this, the makers do seem to have an at least slightly more lucid understanding of the issue of school shootings than say, Michael Moore, or a lot of other mainstream Hollywood personalities do. For example, "I shot as many people as I did because I had to reset the precedent" is exactly the kind of thing a school mass shooter would say, maybe not after being arrested but before in his journals and "confession" tapes. They were able to recognize and convey the idea that infamy is at least almost as big a motive for people like Herman as "revenge" and that there is more too it than just "wahaha I was bullied so now I'm gonna show everyone by shooting up my school".The problem is, that little bit of remarkable perceptiveness and insight is completely balanced out by asinine and simplistic messages about other aspects of school shootings. Anyone who has researched the issue even a little in depth knows that the majority of school shooters are not really severely bullied and the ones that clear whole classrooms are especially unlikely to have been severely hazed, in fact they are often bullies themselves. This is not to say that it was "wrong" per se for them to portray Herman as having been a victim of hazing and cyberbullying, the filmmakers are not obligated to make him exactly like other school shooters and should be free to form their own interpretive framework, but they just really hammered it home too hard. Degrassi can be somewhat excused for their overly simplistic interpretation of the relationship between hazing and school shootings because they made that episode at a time when the narrative that the CHS shooters were just two bullied teens driven to the edge by extreme hazing was still the most widely accepted theory, but that notion has long since been debunked, and in 2012-2015 we should know better. I've seen a couple people ask why they chose to cast a pretty boy as the shooter. Well to be honest that was one of their better decisions, because the students who do this kind of thing really are often pretty boys, not acne-ridden overweight outcasts. I mean obviously it's true that a pretty boy can be a bullying victim as much as anyone else, but the narrative that the skinny emo kid that no one talks to is the most likely to attempt an act like this is a disingenuous and frankly dangerous one. Being antisocial does not automatically rank you at the bottom of the food chain.Every other aspect of the film is a jumbled mess. It seems like in an attempt to frame a dynamic "discussion" about school shootings they decided to try and shoe-horn in as many related topics as possible, but as a result they ended up taking the most juvenile and superficial approach to each one. There's that one political show that serves as an obvious and obnoxious allegory for Fox right-wing talk shows, which is really no more subtle than an SNL sketch about the same subject. There's a Michelle Bachman-like Republican legislator (they just couldn't resist including her party affiliation for the record) who I guess is supposed to p#ss us off with how b#tchy and unsympathetic to Herman she is except the film never really gives us any reason for us to fell all that sorry for him either. Then, as if in an attempt to make it more fair to conservatives, they have some liberal d##s##t commentator who is also presented as being just as much of a moron, along with his "killing people won't stop people from killing people" followers. Maybe the message was "hey look, talking heads who get involved in school shooting stories are nothing more than opportunistic bloodsuckers no matter which end of the political spectrum they hail from", but I doubt it.There's also some peripheral expository arch about Herman's sister having been killed by a car a couple years before the shooting, complete with way over-the-top sequences of him being haunted by her. The best I can tell is that since he felt it was his fault, that feeling of already having blood on his hands made him less apprehensive about the massacre, but they never really explain it in so much detail. There's also a side-story about Lax Morales's having rolled with a quasi-neonazi underground group during the days of his youth and possibly having been implicated as an accessory in the manslaughter death of a black teenager. The relevance this has to the rest of the movie is never flushed out; they clearly thought it was contributing to some kind of "hate breeds hate, violence breeds violence" message which I suppose could have worked but didn't.For people familiar with school shooting movies, "Zero Day" is usually the gold-standard. Now I don't think this film should have been "like Zero Day" and for the record I think some of the things they did were pretty clever. But watching Zero Day can help make clear some of the things that this film unquestionably did wrong.

I think the premise of this film is very intriguing, but I think the execution was flawed. The actors were all very well cast and played their roles brilliantly, but I think the script was a bit shoddy in some places and could have benefited from being longer and fleshing out the characters a bit more- the potential was there but the back stories weren't fully utilized. The story could have done with more development as well- it felt a tad rushed in places.That being said, I think this film is (sadly) very relevant to the world today. It has an important message that needs to be heard, and so far this is one of the only (if not the only) films that touches on this subject matter. It deserves a wider audience because it really does have a lot to say.I think the film was well cast, with Norman Reedus and Garret Backstrom giving great performances. They really make you care about their characters, which from the premise of the film clearly isn't the easiest thing to do, but that is really the whole point. The script and the direction could have been better, but overall the film succeeds in doing what it set out to do- make you think.

Now don't get me wrong, I love the idea of a movie that sheds light on the issues that school bullying brings, but the attempt to humanize someone who took the lives of others is just too much. If you want a great film on the subject, I suggest Bully. A first hand account from people who live through bullying trumps a violent bloodbath being used to push someones agenda any day (you hear me Micheal Moore?) When I first heard about this film, I was excited. No, not because Daryl Dixon was going to play one of the leads, but because this is a very real problem in our society today, one that hits close to home for myself and my friends. I sat down with a friend to watch the trailer when it came out. Less than 30 seconds into the trailer, she was in the bathroom, puking. Why, you may ask, did my friend throw up? Within those 30 seconds, she got to relive losing one of her friends during the shooting at their high school. And I mean really relive it as the person on screen was killed the exact same way. Even the trailer shows the director/writer blatantly using the deaths of real people who died in school shootings for "inspiration" behind the deaths in the movie (our friends were not bully's. They were victims of a demented mind that wanted attention. Of all the people he killed, not a single one had EVER bullied him.) She didn't finish the trailer and her words were, "The only way I'd watch that movie is if Norman Reedus AND the director watched it with me. That way they could see first hand the effect that it has. Reedus can hold my hair while I puke." I, being the glutton for punishment that I am, did finish the movie. Not without difficulty I assure you. I site all of the above negative reviews as my reasons along with the deep sadness of watching people killed in the same manner as people I knew. I get the feeling that 'fans' of Norman Reedus are the only reason that this movie doesn't have one star. While Mr. Reedus and Mr. Backstrom did OK in their rolls, it just wasn't enough to save the sinking ship that is Hello Herman. If you love Norman Reedus, by all means watch away. Just keep your kids away from this movie. To me it feels more like a blueprint in how to get attention than it does a warning of what could happen. Never. Again.

This film truly is thought provoking. I was pulled in the second it started and I never lost interest. It really does raise awareness of teenagers and what they experience in school and at home. A lot of what the main character feels is disconnect from the people at his school and never really truly fitting in. He was just a lost kid who didn't know what else to do to make people actually notice him and he decided to act upon this with violence. Some major issues are prevalent in Hello Herman and in society. Issues of violence, bullying and chaotic family life. A very interesting aspect of the film was the whole concept of how Herman devalued his life. When people see something like this happen they immediately point the finger at the killer and they want to see him suffer. The film reflects what's been happening in our society and doesn't let up on making a point.