Ben X

First of all, this movie is from Belgium. What the fuck? I forgot that was a country until three days ago. Weird. Anyways, this was another one that I wanted to watch because of the high success rate of foreign movies that I have watched so far. Synopsis sounded interesting, blah, blah, blah. You know the story. It was sweet because I was waiting for a new movie to come in the mail and this one was on the Netflix streaming dealie.

The story focuses on Ben (imagine that) who is a high school student with Asperger’s Syndrome (a mild form of autism). There are two kids who relentlessly pick on him at school which makes his life a living hell. His only solace comes in an MMORPG clearly modeled after World of Warcraft.

There he isn’t Ben, the kid with autism, he is a level 80 (told you it was like WoW) knight. He fights alongside his internet dream woman whom Ben feels is the only person in the world worth the time.

She helps him come up with a way to silence his tormentors by finding the appropriate ‘End Game’. Normally I hate it when people give away that there is a twist ending because it always makes me think about it while I watch the movie. This is how I figured out The Sixth Sense as I fucking watched it. But you will not see this twist coming, so I feel quite secure in that I haven’t ruined anything for you.

I liked it a lot. It is shot in documentary style, talking to administrators, teachers and Ben’s parents. Ben does the narrating over the flashback segments. It was extremely disturbing, and not just because the guy playing Ben was clearly in his 30s and in high school.

It’s a bit hard to gauge exactly how much I liked it because while it was quite good, it isn’t so out of the ordinary in its quality. I would probably watch it again, but I feel I got the full effect upon one viewing.

If nothing else it kept Belgium in my consciousness for a few days. That in itself is pretty amazing.

It also has a fucking amazing soundtrack.

Score – 80