Some Kind of Hate opens with a scene of high school bullying[1] that culminates in actions that could be categorized as self-defense or as fairly extreme escalation. I know what I think, but ultimately that’s not important. What the people behind the scenes in the movie thought (school officials, parents, the legal system, whoever) is that the bullied kid needed to go out into the desert for one of those homes for troubled teens, we’ll straighten you out, you’d think military academy but not in this particular instance kind of programs. I’m not sure on what timetable they stay out in the desert, but the part where there were 10-20 kids total makes me think it’s not more than a few months.

…not that even a few weeks would have been short enough to save anyone.

See, the kid starts getting bullied again at the straighten you out in the desert place, because of course he does. And then the body count starts rising, because of course it does. But what makes the movie interesting is the number of switchbacks the plot takes on its way to the blood-soaked conclusion, with dark secrets and unexpected turns galore along the way.

As I’ve said elsewhere, there are several spots where the premise doesn’t entirely hold up to close scrutiny, but if you accept every aspect of the premise, the movie that follows from it does a good job of presenting multiple angles of what is at first glance a pretty one-sided issue. More angles than I would (at that initial glance) have thought plausible.

[1] that was being recorded on cellphone camera no less, and I can tell you I have a lot of thoughts about whether that did or could or should have made a difference to the premise of the film