My Entire High School Sinking Into the Sea Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.5
Video		4.5
Audio		5.0
Extras		4.0
Overall		4.5

My Entire High School Sinking Into the Sea Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Brian Orndorf March 13, 2018

To pull off a disaster movie set inside a high school, animation is the only art form left to handle the enormity and fantasy of the event. Death and destruction are contained within “My Entire High School Sinking Into the Sea,” a darkly comedic take on adolescent survival (both literal and social) from writer/director Dash Shaw, who examines the plight of a crumbling school with emphasis on quirky, psychedelic visuals and distinctive voice work. “My High School Sinking Into the Sea” isn’t a major offering of animation, but it’s wonderfully creative in its approach to doomsday, with Shaw arranging an idiosyncratic tour of behavior and physical challenges that permit him time to conjure a charmingly low-fi world of teen neuroses. It’s strange work, but accomplished and quite funny when it wants to be.

Tides High School sits on the edge of the ocean, welcoming students for another school year, including new sophomores Dash (voiced by Jason Schwartzman) and Assaf (Reggie Watts). Two young men with journalistic ambitions, Dash and Assaf work at the school paper with Verti (Maya Rudolph), trying to dream up ways to attract readers through print. The effort isn’t working, with Verti showing more interest in Assaf than the paper, while Dash finds himself pushed out of his partnership, forced to deal with the high school elite, including hallway enemy Mary (Lena Dunham). Sorting through forbidden files in the archive room, Dash uncovers a chilling report that details how the new school auditorium is built on unstable ground, requiring only a mild earthquake to push the whole building into the open water. When this threat becomes a reality, the students commence a long day of survival challenges, aided by Lunch Lady Lorraine (Susan Sarandon), a tough but caring food professional who loves the teens too much to see them all perish.

A comic book artist and creator, Shaw graduates to feature-length filmmaking with “My High School Sinking Into the Sea.” It’s not much of a leap from the possibilities of the page, permitting the director a chance to experiment with more swirling visuals, through characters that remain mostly subdued in terms of motion, helped along by Squigglevision-style animation that brings life to the frame when there isn’t any. It’s a modest production, but Shaw manages to generate a quirky energy for the movie, which tackles normal adolescent trials with a terrific sense of artistry, giving Dash and Assaf’s misadventure a superb screen elasticity, establishing the unreality of it all to keep the prospect of watching children die a little more palatable than a live-action effort. Faced with a story that barely leaves the school, and Shaw constructs a vivid visit through halls, rooms, and an elevator shaft, building a miniature world of striking colors and memorable design achievements.

“My High School Sinking Into the Sea” is also wise about social order, toying with archetypes and temperaments as the lead characters navigate the student body, facing rejection from popular kids and Mary, who can’t stand the newspaper team. However, the natural flow of contempt is disrupted by disaster, with an earthquake sending the building into the ocean, where it begins the Titanic-style process of sinking, taking lives along the way. The movie is meant to be a comedy, but severity remains, just not for long, with desperate acts of escape often chased with awkward encounters, watching the kids forced into a grim situation that demands they “Breakfast Club”-up and figure out a way to return to stable ground. Unlikely leadership is provided by Lorraine, who adores the students, armed with herbal remedies to calm nerves and tough-love pep talks to keep them brave. Along the way, even Mary becomes a key member of the team, joining Dash, Assaf, and Verti as they battle sharks, flooding, and power outages, slowly discovering the new jock order that’s out to claim what remains.

My Entire High School Sinking Into the Sea Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

A homegrown animated production, "My Entire High School Sinking Into the Sea" uses its textures wonderfully, and the AVC encoded image (2.38:1 aspect ratio) presentation does justice to the original artwork. Detail pops with confidence, taking in different artistic styles and background materials, which retain touchable surfaces throughout. Clarity never wavers, offering appealing sharpness, which helps to take in the particulars of the central disaster and the nuances of school life, making tiny text readable. Colors are direct and intense, with the picture's dream-like survival challenges using a rainbow of bright hues, keeping artfulness alert as psychedelic asides amplify the palette. Primaries as just as vivid, making character designs compelling, along with hallway and classroom decoration. Delineation is communicative. Artifacting is rare, but banding is detected during the viewing experience, most defined during the elevator shaft escape sequence.

My Entire High School Sinking Into the Sea Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The 5.1 DTS-HD MA mix adds to the visual expanse of "My High School Slowly Sinking Into the Sea" with a highly active sound design, giving the feature a defined aural presence. Surrounds are alert throughout the listening event, offering sharp atmospherics that detail high school bustle with the student body, eventually transitioning into disaster movie mode, where aquatic environments and narrow passageways deliver an evocative understanding of position. Mild frontal panning effects are also engaging for travel sequences. Dialogue exchanges are fresh, protecting idiosyncratic performance choices and panicked reactions, never slipping into distortive extremes. Scoring is effective, leading with sharp synth sounds, periodically joined by fuller soundtrack offerings. Low-end is satisfactory, dealing with explosions and the rumbling the school's descent into the ocean. Sound effects are precise.

My Entire High School Sinking Into the Sea Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Commentary features writer/director Dash Shaw.

• "The Art of 'My Entire High School Sinking Into the Sea'" (13:08, HD) returns to Shaw, who describes his cinematic ambition for the picture, discussing animation techniques and styles to help bring something personal and different to the movie, which provided a creative challenge due to its feature-length run time and need for a larger team to complete the effort. He's joined by lead animator Jane Samborski, breaking down the details of certain complex sequences, including "Title Sequence," "Hallway Run Sequence," "Lunch Lady Lorraine," and "The Flower Transition."

• Short Films by Dash Shaw (all HD) include "Baroness" (1:09), "New School Trailer" (1:04), "Bottomless Belly Button" (1:02), and "Bodyworld" (1:14). Interestingly, many of the techniques found in "My Entire High School Sinking Into the Sea" are developed here, giving the viewer a chance to watch Shaw's creative evolution via short blasts of abstraction.

• And a Theatrical Trailer (1:55, HD) is included.

My Entire High School Sinking Into the Sea Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Shaw has fun with different animation styles, and his video game influence erupts in a highly amusing mid-movie scene where Lorraine thrashes a collection of bathroom brutes, resembling a lost level from "Double Dragon." Perhaps dramatic intensity is lacking from "My High School Sinking Into the Sea," but the feature has keen awareness of adolescent concerns such as social acceptance and friendship complications, and its sense of humor is steady, helped along by engaged voice work from Schwartzman and Dunham, while Sarandon steals scenes as Lorraine. "My High School Sinking Into the Sea" is a terrific example of low-budget craftsmanship, as Shaw makes up for his lack of money with creative invention, amusing references, and an off-beat appreciation for disaster movies.