Blame

Quinn Shephard

2018

Synopsis

A drama teacher's taboo relationship with an unstable student strikes a nerve in her jealous classmate, sparking a vengeful chain of events within their suburban high school that draws parallels to "The Crucible".

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Recommendations

83
The Playlist
It’s an insightful film that delivers an honest portrait of four girls trying to navigate high school, expectations, friendships and their oftentimes heartbreaking need to be desired and loved.
75
RogerEbert.com
The film gets increasingly hallucinatory as it progresses, and there's a vivid sense of growing danger.
70
Village Voice
Quinn Shephard’s directorial debut, Blame, leans heavily on this persistent despair, yes, but also leverages it in innovative and occasionally startling ways.
67
The Film Stage
Well-acted and handsomely lensed by Aaron Kovalchik, Blame is an engaging debut that subverts the male gaze that might be associated with this kind of teacher/student relationship drama. It is objective without being titillating as it delivers low-key character driven thrills.
67
IndieWire
The witch-hunt metaphor that emerges from Abigail’s bullying is more overt than it needs to be, but Shephard clearly didn’t rely on SparkNotes in crafting her film.
60
Variety
Shephard has a lively eye for the neurotic ripples of high-school society, but her most audacious gambit is to dare to place the audience in a grey zone between innocence and judgment regarding a relationship that plays out more sympathetically than it should.
50
The Hollywood Reporter
Blame essentially flirts with one set of clichés only to settle down with another. But it has the merit of at least striving for the substantive (the agonies of teenage girlhood) over the merely titillating (transgressive sex).
40
Los Angeles Times
This capably acted, if unevenly paced film often lacks focus and depth.

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