It is about the École Polytechnique massacre
, where an anti-feminist killed 14 women and injured 14 other people before turning his gun against himself.
Unusually, the film was shot twice: once in French and once in English.
Tropes found in this film:
- Axes at School: The killer uses a Ruger Mini-14 to massacre the female students.
- Based on a True Story: The film is a dramatized account of the École Polytechnique massacre that took place on December 6, 1989.
- Deliberately Monochrome: This was in order to avoid blood being noticeable on-screen.
- Driven to Suicide: Both the killer (via a self-inflicted Boom, Headshot!) and Jean-François (via carbon monoxide poisoning).
- He-Man Woman Hater: The whole reason the killer does the massacre is that he is "fighting feminism".
- How We Got Here: The film starts with several female students being shot near photocopiers. The film then cuts to the killer preparing for the massacre.
- No Name Given: The killer's name (Marc Lépine) is never mentioned once throughout the film, not even in the credits.
- Shut Up, Kirk!: When the killer announces his intentions to kill them for being feminists, one of the female students tries to argue that they don't identify with the feminist movement and are just students like any other. She gets shot mid-sentence, along with the other female students alongside her.
- Straw Misogynist: The killer, as is made obvious by his actions and his hateful manifesto.
- Survivor Guilt: Both Valérie and Jean-François suffer from this in the aftermath of the massacre, the former due to losing her best friend and other classmates to the killer and the latter due to feeling he let his fellow female students down by leaving the classroom when the killer ordered him to.
- Violence Is Disturbing: A Villeneuve staple. Given the circumstances, this is justified.
- Would Hit a Girl: The killer only targets female students and faculty members during the massacre.
