Film / Klass

Klass (Estonian for The Class) is a 2007 Teen Drama film centered around bullying.

The film follows two teenagers named Joosep Raak and Kaspar Kordes, who are both suffering from bullying problems. The bullies: their entire class, led by Anders Allikmäe. Joosep takes most of their abuse, and Kaspar is suffering just because he's defending him. Even worse, none of the faculty knows about it, and the only adult who does isn't any help. As such, it follows the two as they do whatever they can to put an end to their suffering, eventually deciding to make sure they never do it again if you know what I mean.

In 2010, the film got a Sequel Series called Klass: Elu Pärast (The Class: Life After) that focuses on the aftermath of the film's events, told from the perspectives of several other people, like fellow students, the student's families, and even Kaspar.

The original film provides examples of:

• Adults Are Useless: No other adults learn about what Joosep and Kaspar's classmates are doing to them until Liina tips the school administration off. Before that, Margus tries to be helpful, but it's just encouraging him to stand up for himself.
• Antagonist Title: The movie is called The Class, and the main villains are the protagonists' class.
• Asshole Victim: While this trope was played straight in the original film with Anders, Paul, Olav, and Riina, it's deconstructed in this show, which focuses on the aftermath of the shooting, and shows how it has affected everyone in town, making it clear that as bad as they may have been, they didn't deserve to be murdered. A few episodes show that the four have parents who cared for them, and none of the parents know why they thought it was a good idea to bully Joosep in the first place.
• Audience Surrogate: As Joosep and Kaspar are approaching the cafeteria with guns, ready to kill their classmates, they walk past Kerli, an emo classmate who decides to let the two have their way with the others. The fact that she was content with them shooting up their school reflects how the audience will feel when the two get their revenge.
• Axes at School: In the climax of the film, Joosep and Kaspar finally get even with their bullies with Margus' guns.
• Ax-Crazy: Anders, his friends, and the other bullies are very scary people. Joosep and Kaspar later turn out this way.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: Margus knows about Joosep's bullying problems, and wants him to stand up for himself, and hopefully fight back against Anders to scare the others away from bullying him. He later gets his wish, and Joosep does stand up to his class with Kaspar, but not in the way he was hoping.
• Big Bad: Anders.
• Big Bad Ensemble: Joosep and Kaspar's class, led by Anders, are horrifically bullying the two.
• The Bully: Joosep and Kaspar's entire class are their biggest enemies in school.
• Bully Hunter: Joosep and Kaspar stand up to their class at the end of the film. And when I say stand up to their class, I mean attack their class in the cafeteria armed with guns.
• Bully Magnet: Joosep is this, and Kaspar is one too for defending him.
• Butt-Monkey: In a rare tragic example, we have Joosep, for obvious reasons.
• Bystander Syndrome: Nobody did anything to help Joosep and Kaspar, which ultimately led to them committing mass murder to get even with their class. If someone had intervened, none of that would've happened. They're just as much to blame for the shooting as the bullies, and, surprisingly, the two didn't go after those who failed to help them when they needed it.
• Columbine: Hmm... let's see, we got two bullied teenagers who are rumored to be gay, and they steal guns and shoot up their school. Does This Remind You of Anything?
• Create Your Own Villain: Joosep and Kaspar's bullying at the hands of their classmates drives them to shoot up their school.
• Disproportionate Retribution: How do Joosep and Kaspar put an end to their bullying problems? By killing their bullies! That's how!
• Downer Ending: Joosep and Kaspar's bullying problems get so bad that they are driven to commit Estonia's first school shooting, resulting in the deaths of Anders, Paul, Joosep, and a few others. Kaspar's still alive, but he's going to prison for his involvement in the shooting, and even though the class was at risk of being outed as bullies, they never are.
• The Dragon: Paul is Anders' best friend, and they have 3 friends: Toomas, Tiit, and Olav.
• Dramatically Missing the Point: Thea, Kaspar's girlfriend, is one of the kids bullying Joosep, and given that, she doesn't like Kaspar defending him, and publicly dumps him as a result once she's called out. Joosep almost killed her for this, but she only lived because Kaspar stopped him.
• Driven to Suicide: After killing Anders and his friends, Joosep and Kaspar decide to shoot themselves in the head on the count of 3. However, while the former does this, the latter doesn't.
• Easily Forgiven: If Kaspar used to bully Joosep before defending him, the latter seems to be on good terms with the former despite everything else.
• Episode Title Card: The film is comprised of 7 chapters (labeled "Days"), and each one has a card that shows up before the chapter begins.
  • Day 1: Are you a freak?
  • Day 2: Recieve a kick in the ass every day
  • Day 3: The sneak hasn't apologized?
  • Day 4: What are you doing?
  • Day 5: Do you like a [CENSORED DUE TO RISK OF HOMOPHOBIA ACCUSATIONS]?
  • Day 6: Kaspar, I love you
  • Day 7: I'm sorry, grandma
• Face–Heel Turn: Thea dumps Kaspar on the beach just so she won't be targeted by the rest of the class. Joosep almost kills her for this, and why Kaspar stopped him from doing so is a mystery.
• Foreshadowing: When Kaspar talks with Joosep about how the latter will be able to deal with Anders and the others, he suggests shooting them. Do you want to take a guess at how the two stop them?
• Get Out!: After Anders and Kaspar's fight at the house part early on in the film forces Kaspar to leave, Riina starts screaming at Anders to get out of her house.
• Hate Sink: A whole class of them, and the only ones who aren't nasty people are victimized by their classmates.
• Heel–Face Turn: As far as everyone knows, Kaspar used to bully Joosep along with the others, but upon seeing Thea witness his actions, he had a change of heart and began defending him.
• Heterosexual Life-Partners: Note how I said heterosexual, which is different from homosexual, which Joosep and Kaspar are rumored to be by their class.
• Hidden Depths: Joosep has an interest in computers, and has made websites for several companies. If he was still alive to this day, maybe he could've gotten a job at a tech company.
• Karma Houdini: Downplayed. Joosep and Kaspar end up killing Anders, Paul, Olav, and Riina, but that still leaves all of the other bullies that they haven't killed. Even though they were spared, they might still be traumatized at what happened, and full of regret, since they were the reasons why the two did it. Plus, since the press might know about what they've been doing to the two kids, they might become pariahs.
• Kids Are Cruel: One of the transitions in the film depicts a bunch of preteen kids bullying another one. Given that the same thing has been happening to Joosep at the hands of his classmates, this is very symbolic of the current situation. The bullied kid might even be a younger Joosep. Who knows?
• Laser-Guided Karma: After spending the entire film resisting the urge to get out of your seat and attempt to violently beat up the bullies, then hug Joosep and Kaspar, you'll be rewarded with an epic scene in which the two finally get payback. Just as long as you're content with watching a school shooting onscreen.
• Murder-Suicide: In the climactic shooting, Joosep kills 4 people: Olav, Riina, Anders, and himself.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Kaspar accidentally shoots a girl who was in a different class than him and Joosep while trying to shoot Anders, and he regrets it, but only because she never did anything to them. At the end, it's implied that he feels the same way about shooting up the school in the first place.
• Protagonist Journey to Villain: The entire movie shows Joosep and Kaspar dealing with the issues they have to put up with regarding their class. It eventually culminates in them becoming the one kind of person even worse than bullies: school shooters.
• Riddle for the Ages: What on Earth did Joosep do to earn the ire of his classmates?! His bullying problems can't have started for no reason, right?
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge: At the end of the film, Joosep and Kaspar decide that they've had enough and shoot up their school to get revenge on their bullies.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Once Anders is the only primary target left alive, he tries to get away from Joosep and Kaspar before they can kill him. Ultimately, he fails and is killed by Joosep.
• Teens Are Monsters: Joosep and Kaspar are aware of how bad teenagers can be from all the crap they had to put up with regarding their class. Of course, that doesn't mean they themselves can't become monsters.
• Trailers Always Spoil: One of the trailers has several clips of Joosep and Kaspar's Roaring Rampage of Revenge at the end of the film.
• Uncertain Doom: While we can confirm that Anders and Paul are dead, as well as Riina, and Thea was shot and almost killed by Joosep, we also saw Toomas, Tiit, Olav, and a girl from another class get shot, and we aren't told specifically who survived and who didn't. Life After reveals that Anders, Paul, Olav, and Riina were the only fatalities apart from Joosep. Toomas and Tiit survived alongside Thea and were recovering in the hospital. We don't hear about the random girl who got shot, but since she isn't being memorialized with the others, we can assume she survived.
• Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: Joosep and Kaspar become this at the end of the film. Throughout the film, both of them (Joosep in particular) have had to put up with extreme bullying from their classmates, and no one is helping them. When they steal guns and shoot up the school, the film likely expects us to be rooting for them, but it's still a school shooting we're watching. As they all say, "If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself.

Klass: Elu Parast provides examples of:

• A Day in the Limelight: Most of the episodes focus on characters who appeared in the original film, but weren't given much Character Development there. In order, there's Kerli, Margus, Laine, Thea, and Toomas.
• And Now for Someone Completely Different: Each episode primarily focuses on a different character, and it's always someone who had some kind of involvement in the shooting.
  • Episode 1: Kerli is rumored to have been in on the shooting, is hiding out with her grandmother, and has decided to let authorities know about what the class had done that caused the attack in the first place.
  • Episode 2: Margus, Joosep's father, is struggling to come to terms with the fact that his son stood up to his bullies in the one way he wasn't expecting him to.
  • Episode 3: Laine, the teacher of Joosep and Kaspar's class, deeply regrets not doing anything about their bullying problem, and is struggling to explain everything to her husband.
  • Episode 4: Thea, Kaspar's ex-girlfriend, regrets dumping Kaspar, and spends the episode trying to get in contact with him in hopes of apologizing.
  • Episode 5: Paul's parents, mostly his father, Väino, are struggling to come to terms with the fact that not only did Paul bully Joosep and Kaspar, but he was the one who caused the bullying in the first place.
  • Episode 6: Toomas, one of the main bullies, survived the shooting, but is now wheelchair bound, and has been transferred to a new school. He deeply regrets everything he did, and hopes to come to terms with what he has done.
  • Episode 7: Kaspar, who is still in prison for shooting up the school with Joosep, has a chance to earn his freedom when a lawyer decides to represent him in court. While the lawyer tries to convince people to give him a light sentence, Kaspar has to come to terms with everything.
• Artifact Title: The series has "The Class" in its name, but we only see Joosep and Kaspar's former class in Episodes 1, 3, and 4. While some members of the class (and Laine) appear in other episodes of the show, Episodes 2, 5, 6, and 7 don't show the class as a whole at all.
• Greater-Scope Villain: Anders might've been Joosep's chief tormentor, but Episode 5 reveals that Paul was the one who started the poor kid's misfortunes.
• Heel–Face Turn: The sixth episode does a good job at making us like Toomas by showing that he feels remorse for everything he did to Joosep and Kaspar, and in the following episode, he takes the stand at Kaspar's trial to try and apologize to him.
• Heroic BSoD: Laine has one at the end of the first episode when she finally learns about how her entire class was responsible for driving Joosep and Kaspar to commit the shooting.
• History Repeats: In the second episode, Margus is beaten up by the fathers of some of the people killed in the shooting in a manner reminiscent of how Joosep (Margus's son) was bullied by his classmates.
  • In the seventh episode, Ingrid mentions how when she was in school, another female student was being bullied by her classmates, and no one did anything to help. The events of the original film could be seen as that event happening all over again.
• Hope Spot: A more positive example of this occurs at the end of the fourth episode, after Kaspar rejects Thea's request to visit him offscreen. During the final seconds of the episode, Thea receives a letter in the mail written by Kaspar.
• Imagine Spot: The final episode has a brief cut to a sequence that has Kaspar getting beaten up by Joosep on the beach during a rainy night. This, obviously, never happened, but it could be symbolic of how Kaspar felt at the moment.
• Last Disrespects: Joosep can't seem to catch a break even in death, as his memorial photo on a bulletin board is vandalized. Then again, the vandal could've been someone who isn't happy with one of the shooters being memorialized as a victim, even though he had a good reason to in his opinion
• Lower-Deck Episode: The first episode focuses on Kerli, who had a minor role in the original film.
• My Greatest Failure: Plenty of things regarding the shooting and the events leading up to it. For example, Kerli doesn't think it was a good idea letting Joosep and Kaspar have their way with the others, Laine is unhappy with herself for not helping Joosep, which factored into his involvement in the shooting, Thea deeply regrets dumping Kaspar just to save face with the rest of the class, and Toomas likely wishes that he never bullied Joosep in the first place.
• Nightmare Sequence: Toomas has one in the sixth episode based on the shooting. First, he is walking through the darkened corridors of his old school while screaming can be heard in the background, then he's trying to get up a flight of stairs while wheelchair-bound.
• Took a Level in Kindness: The titular class seems to be nicer than they were in the first film, albeit to some extent. Of course, it could be simply because Anders isn't part of the class anymore.
  • One notable example of this trope is the sixth episode, which focuses on Toomas. If you watched the movie, you should remember that he was one of Joosep's main bullies, and as such, you likely won't be eager to focus on him after all he's done. However, as the episode goes on, we learn that ever since he survived the shooting (which got him crippled), he had begun to regret everything he did to Joosep, and by the end of the episode, several viewers will likely have felt sorry for him, now knowing that as bad as he was, he deserves a second chance. He even apologizes to Kaspar in the final episode.
• Walking Spoiler: This show is about the aftermath of the school shooting that takes place at the end of the film, which makes it almost impossible to talk about this show without giving away the ending to the movie. That's why several parts of this section of the page are censored; because most of it references the ending.