By: Sophia Elmstrom & Lily Sheldon

(Warning: Rated R)

As many may know, in April of 2022, the students at Highland would end their school day and see cameras and trailers outside everywhere. Out of all the schools to film a movie, why would they choose ours? Well, that’s because the movie was based out of the 80’s, and our school hasn’t changed much since the 80’s. It was exciting knowing that a film was being created in our town and our school. Getting to see the classrooms we sit in and halls we walk in every day on a big screen was something pretty special. They even used our football field for a lot of scenes. The movie came out, called ‘Downtown Owl’, and we wanted to give our thoughts on it.

First, here is a quick rundown on the movie. ‘Downtown Owl’, it was based on the novel by Chuck Klosterman. It is set in the isolated, fictional town of Owl, North Dakota in the 1980’s and there are 3 main characters that the story follows: Horace, Mitch, and Julia. Horace is an old man who spends most of his days at the local coffee shop in town, Mitch is a depressed high school back up quarterback, and Julia is the new English teacher at Owl High School, who moved to the town for a semester so she could be out of the way while her husband gets his PhD. The story follows their lives in Owl and how they all become connected and a part of each other’s lives. Julia begins to make friendships, and a possible romance, as she tries to escape her home life with her husband by going to the small town. The movie leads up to the massive whiteout blizzard (based on the one in Minnesota) that enters the town towards the end of the movie.

After watching this film, here are our thoughts: The movie had a very small town, nostalgic feel, which made you feel like you really got to know the characters. The trailers to the movie got you very captivated and interested in watching the movie. But honestly, the trailer was better than the film. The plot was very confusing and vague, it quickly became hard to understand what was going on. It seemed like the whole time you were waiting for something to happen, but nothing ever did. There were also some points in the movie that felt just a little bit off. For example, there was a teacher student relationship, but it didn’t seem a huge issue to the characters, it also seemed normal or like they weren’t concerned about this at all.

The film also seemed low-budget, as the bell would ring for the students to go to class, you would only ever see 2 or 3 students walking in the halls. There were also a couple scenes with the football team, and they only ever showed around 5-7 players, even when the whole “team” was gathered in the locker room during halftime of a game. It seemed like they should have had a few more extras in the movie to just make it feel like a more realistic high school experience.

Overall, we felt like this movie had a cozy small midwestern town feel to it but it had no clear plot. It felt like the movie was put together quickly with no conflict or resolution of anything. On many other people’s ratings they agree with our take on this movie; many thought there was no clear plot. Many other reviews also said that the trailer looked very captivating but when they finally got to watching the movie they were let down. This movie got a 49% on Rotten Tomatoes and a 4.9/10 on IMDb. We agree with these ratings and it really shows how much the plot needed to be thickened. We believe that the idea of this movie was a very good idea though.

We rate this movie a 4/10 because of the fact that there is no clear plot.