Hector is an exploitation movie, no doubt about it. It deals exclusively with issues of teen suicide, bullying and violent revenge. Some might say it's redeemed by the twist at the end, but I'm not so sure.

Since the massacre at Columbine High School, several films have tackled the issue of school shootings, such as Uwe Boll's Heart of America and Ben Coccio's Zero Day. The most acclaimed is Gus Van Sant's Elephant, which takes a clinical narrative approach and clearly abhors the violence it's showing us. Even so, the film was criticized for allegedly inspiring the killer in the Red Lake High School massacre.

In the scene where Hector finally snaps, the violence is shown subjectively, video game-style, with a computer-generated spray of blood coming out of the victim's head. I wish writer-director Daunier Estevez had at least filmed this shot from a different angle, so that we didn't associate the violence onscreen with a game.

Like the bullied teen who gives the film its title, Hector isn't all bad. Technically it is quite good. Its raw look puts us in the main character's headspace, and it maintains a tone of grim desperation throughout. The film may even be cathartic for Estevez, and who am I to deny a filmmaker his catharsis?