Hello Herman

Hello, Herman is a 2012 American drama film directed by Michelle Danner, written by John Buffalo Mailer, and starring Norman Reedus, Garrett Backstrom, Rob Estes and Martha Higareda. It premiered at the 16th Annual Hollywood Film Festival on October 20, 2012. Plot Set in the not so distant future, in the United States, sixteen-year-old Herman Howards makes a fateful decision. He enters his suburban school and kills thirty-nine students, two teachers, and a police officer. Just before his arrest he emails his idol, famous journalist Lax Morales, sending him clips of the shootings captured with Herman's own digital camera. In the clips Herman tells Lax, "I want to tell my story on your show". Lax, haunted by his own past, is now face to face with Herman. Herman is executed in the electric chair. The movie explores why and how a massacre like this can happen in our society, desensitizing in America, youth violence and bullying, the impact the media has on our individual quest for fame, and ultimately our need for connection. Reception Hello Herman holds a 13% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, based on 6 reviews, with a rating average of 4/10. Metacritic has given the film a weighted average score of 27/100, based on 5 reviews, indicating "generally unfavorable reviews". Sam Adams of Time Out New York said that the most fitting punishment for Hello Herman was to simply ignore its existence: "it barely tries to offer insight into its much-debated subject, content to rip the scab off an ever-fresh wound for the sake of controversy." The Los Angeles Timess Amy Nicholson wrote about the incompetence of the director: "we're not sure what director Michelle Danner, who plays Herman's defensive mother in an uncredited role, wants us to get besides a reminder that angry boys act out for a host of half-defined reasons." The Village Voices Rob Staeger stated that "the dialogue is all surface: emotions are laid out on the autopsy table for the audience to dissect and analyze, but rarely feel." The New York Timess Jeannette Catsoulis finds that "pointing at everything and elucidating nothing, Hello Herman arrives freighted with the anti-bullying agenda of its director, Michelle Danner." In contrast to other critics, Sam Kashner of Vanity Fair said that “Hello Herman is a powerful and important work, a darkly brilliant tone poem about America’s tango with violence and fame. Herman will get under your skin. He may even follow you home.