~Unpopular Opinion

Duck! is a better movie than Elephant.

Yes, Duck! is a pretty terrible movie by technical/professional standards, but it's not taking itself seriously like Elephant is. When I watch Duck! I can tell that I'm just watching an edgy passion project made by a bunch of dorks. It's amusingly bad. It's entertaining even when it's stupid or off-topic. Also, as stupid as the movie is, they parallel Columbine a lot better than how Elephant just shoehorns the mention of a TEC-9, "most importantly have fun," failed bombs, the library, locker on fire, etc. in toward the end.

Elephant, on the other hand, treats itself like a movie to be taken seriously. Their attempt at making a big impact with the shooting by following students that aren't the shooters results in terrible pacing & meaningless scenes. A majority of the movie is just... nothing. Why am I watching people play football just out of frame for what feels like forever? Why am I watching this dudes entire walk to class? Why am I watching this girls agonizingly slow process of taking off her sweatshirt & putting on a shirt? There is no dialogue or foreshadowing happening in these scenes, they're silent & totally unnecessary. This isn't deep & doesn't make the characters feel realistic or endearing, especially when the dialogue (as rare as it is) is so clunky to the point that no human, let alone teenager, would ever naturally speak like these characters do. Within the first ~34 minutes of the movie (nearly halfway through) we've only had two scenes of one of the shooters... & a good portion of those scenes were nothing, too! The second scene is literally just him drinking milk.

Also, why are all these mfing shooter movies abt gay dudes (or undertones at the least?) Duck! with the dead hand-holding, Elephant with the straight up gayness & Zero Day intending to have a kiss scene with Andre & Cal. Where are you guys getting all these boyfriends that are willing to mass murder with you?? ...Asking for a friend.

TLDR: Elephant is infuriating to because literally nothing happens. Duck! is goofy but at least fun to watch.