Review

Culture

Education

7 September 2023

6 min read

Back to school on the big screen

It’s back to school for many. Yaroslav Walker picks his favourite films capturing the friendship, the drama, and the expectation of school life and beyond.

Yaroslav Walker

Yaroslav is Vicar of Christ Church, Hampstead.

School students walk across a playground confidently talking and laughing with us

The History Boys.

BBC Films.

The summer is coming to an end, the last BBQ embers are sputtering to sleep, the weather…appears not to have been told, at least in London! Sweltering! Most importantly of all, our children are back to school, nursery or college. In light of this momentous time of year here are my top five back to school film choices, one each for the last five decades, and some honourable mentions.

1970s - American Grafitti

A teenage couple dressed in 1950s clothes sit on a kerb in deep conversation.

Charles Martin Smith and Candy Clark in American Graffiti

American Graffiti isn’t just a lovely piece of nostalgia now, it was back then. A misty-eyed look back at 60s Americana, this film is packed with slicked-back hair, classic cars, diners with roller-skating waitresses, and the complexities of teenage romance. Four friends meet on the last day of summer to experience the joys of a California evening one last time before two of them jet off to college ‘back East’. Curt is unsure about his future and is even considering staying in his hometown. Steve is hubristically thrilled about the prospect of fleeing his humdrum life and even shedding his loving girlfriend for new conquests. Terry is insecure and simply desperate to prove he is as good as everyone else, and Milner is the older friend who never left town and is a local-legend drag-racer. Over the course of a long night they go their separate ways, have adventures, and finally find some closure to their ongoing anxieties: one finds new confidence, another begins to take risks, another learns to be happy with his lot, and Milner wins a drag race…oh, an learns the genuine happiness that can be found in adult responsibility. It's too long, but it is a lovely atmosphere to meander about in, and is edited superbly so it never really drags. With superb performances and a soundtrack bursting with 50s and 60s hits, this is well worth a watch.

1980s - The Breakfast Club

Five glum students perch on stools in school room.

Molly Ringwald, Emilio Estevez, Judd Nelson, Ally Sheedy, and Anthony Michael Hall in The Breakfast Club.

Well what else could it have been!? In many ways the film set the classic pattern of US High School living (which did and sometimes still does inform UK attitudes) and the High School movie. John Hughes didn’t invent these archetypes and wasn’t the first to put them on celluloid, but he was the master of crystallising them. The Breakfast Club presents an all-day detention that just so happens to have a representative from every social caste of the High School system: Andrew the jock (Emelio Esteves), Brian the nerd (Anthony Michael Hall), Allison the weirdo (Ally Sheedy), Claire the popular girl (Molly Ringwald), and Bender the burnout (Judd Nelson). These five kids have nothing in common but their dislike of the domineering Vice-Principal (Paul Gleason was born for this role!)…OR DO THEY!? Whereas American Graffiti explored the process of maturing into adulthood and the taking charge of one’s sense of self (with a background hum of Vietnam paranoia and the end of golden Americana days), The Breakfast Club is much more forthright in demonstrating just how difficult being a teenager is. These kids don’t need help ‘growing up’, if anything they need to be allowed to be kids. Over the course of the day their defences break down and they learn that each of them has expectations and pressures that seem overwhelming, and grown to have genuine respect and compassion for each other. A script that is sometimes on-the-nose and prone to soliloquy is saved by the sheer bravura of the performances. A go to comfort film, that will always be iconic. Any film which ends with Simple Minds is a 5 star affair for me.

1990s - The Faculty

Two students walk down a school corridor, one looking away.

Elijah Wood and Jordana Brewster in The Faculty.

We move to slightly scarier fare with the 90s. The Faculty asks the question you were all asking…what if Invasion of the Bodysnatchers took place in an American high school? The answer is subtext; a lot of subtext and allegory. You know, when you’re a teenager, everything can seem quite tough. The world can seem like it's against you. It can seem like everyone you know has changed overnight and you’re lost in a sea of hostile faces. It can seem like a parasitic alien is using your school as a beachhead for a planetary takeover. The Faculty is cinematic junk-food and unapologetically so. It is camp and silly and fun. It takes those Hughesian archetypes, puts them on steroids, and then throws them into a plot joyfully riffing on the most classic sci-fi and horror tropes - all held nicely together with a quip-filled Kevin Williamson screenplay. An underrated Robert Rodriguez directorial effort which shows that he can work well across genres, and an excellent opportunity to see early performances from Josh Hartnett, Elijah Wood, Jon Stewart, and…wait…is that Usher in that film!?

2000s - The History Boys

Yes, we move to British shores at last. Alan Bennett’s stage-play is brought to beautiful cinematic life by original director Nicholas Hytner, who has an excellent track record of translating Bennett’s work from stage to screen. It’s another flash of nostalgia (which all such films are, as adult writers and directors look back to their own school days and teenage angst and adventure) which transports the viewer to 1980s Sheffield. A group of friends at the local Grammar School have all done very well in their A Levels and are now put to the task of preparing for the Oxford entrance exams. All are lovers of History (well, maybe not Rudge) and have received an enviously eclectic education in the full gamut of culture from the eccentric and long-suffering Hector. Like all the films above, The History Boys explores the challenges of adolescence, but with a specific focus on ‘doing well’ in a particularly British way. Sporting excellence or popularity aren’t the measure of student success - Oxbridge is. The teachers don’t push the young men nearly as much as they do themselves, seeing a place at Oxford as the best form of advancement. The witty and moving script also touches on the issue of infatuation, attraction, sexual fluidity, and chaste reciprocity: Posner’s love for Dakin being encouraged only so far in some sort of mutually agreed stand-off, Dakin’s willingness to sleep with the substitute teacher Irwin, and (of course) Hector’s tradition of giving the boys a ride home on his motorcycle and…appreciating them aesthetically. Not easy subject matter, but written and directed and shot and performed with such sensitivity that you can’t help but fall in love with every character.

2010s - The Inbetweeners Movie

Two students look at each in in incomprehension.

Blake Harrison and Simon Bird in The Inbetweeners.

We end with crudity. Crudity and friendship and a booze-filled week in Crete. Lovers of the TV show (I was one) - which explored the trials and tribulations of four unpopular, unremarkable, and unfortunate teens at a British comprehensive school- were well served by this upgrade. TV comedies, like plays, rarely translate well; The Inbetweeners Movie is an honourable exception. Will, Simon, Jay, and Neil have come to the end of their school days and decide that they need one final hurrah before they go their separate ways. The proceeding 90 minutes is a torrent of drunken antics, foul-mouthed discourse, and crass toilet humour, all threaded together by hapless and fruitless sexual intrigue. 90 mins of that might seem like it would wear thin, but The Inbetweeners Movie is too kind-hearted to go stale (unlike its successor which was a genuinely squalid and unpleasant affair which had me questioning humanity). The four young men are so pathetic in the true sense of the word, that you can’t help but cheer for them. The overall message of friendship as a virtue that transcends the ups-and-downs of life give the salty humour a sweet edge. For a certain generation - mine - this might be the definitive British school movie.

Honourable Mentions

Grease

Sort of like American Graffiti…but better. I’m talking Travolta, I’m talking Newton-John, I’m talking songs that are bullet-proof! Graffiti is on the official list because it speaks to the many cultural and political undercurrents of the time…but Grease is so much more fun. If you can only see one of the two, see Grease!

Gregory’s Girl

Pipped by Breakfast because of the archetypes and Simple Minds, but probably one of the finest British rom-coms ever!

Mean Girls

Obviously. It's so fetch!

Article

Belief

Culture

Mental Health

Pride

17 September 2025

4 min read

Are AI chatbots actually demons in disguise?

Early Christian thinkers explain chatbots better than Silicon Valley does

Gabrielle Thomas

Gabrielle Thomas is Assistant Professor of Early Christianity and Anglican Studies at Emory University

An AI image of a person stood holding a phone with a bubble above their head, below them is a chatbot-like demon with a tail

Nick Jones/Midjourney.ai.

AI Chatbots. They’re here to save us, aren’t they? Their designers argue so, fervently. There’s no doubt they are useful. Some, like EpiscoBOT (formerly known as ‘Cathy’), are designed for those asking ‘life’s biggest questions. 'Our girlfriend Scarlett’, is an AI companion who “is always eager to please you in any way imaginable.” So why not defend them?

They offer companionship for the lonely, spark creativity when we run on empty, and make us more productive. They also provide answers for any and every kind of question without hesitation. They are, in short, a refuge. Many chatbots come with names, amplifying our sense of safety. Names define and label things, but they do far more than that. Names foster connection. They can evoke and describe a relationship, allowing us to make intimate connections with the things named. When the “things” in question are AI chatbots, however, we can run into trouble.

According to a study conducted by researchers at Stanford University, chatbots can contribute to “harmful stigma and dangerous responses.” More than this, they can even magnify psychotic symptoms. The more we learn, the more we are beginning to grasp that the much of the world offered by AI chatbots is an illusory one.

Early Christian thinkers had a distinct category for precisely this kind of illusion: the demonic. They understood demons not as red, horned bodies or fiery realms, but as entities with power to fabricate illusions—visions, appearances, and deceptive signs that distorted human perception of reality. Demons also personified pride. As fallen angels, they turned away from truth toward themselves. Their illusions lured humans into sharing that pride—believing false greatness, clinging to false refuge.

Looking back to early Christian approaches to demonology may help us see more clearly what is at stake in adopting without question AI chatbots.

According to early Christian thinkers, demons rarely operated through brute force. Instead, they worked through deception. Athanasius of Alexandria (c. 296–373) was a bishop and theologian who wrote Life of Antony. In this, he recounted how the great desert father was plagued by demonic visions—phantoms of wild beasts, apparitions of gold, even false angels of light. The crucial danger was not physical attack but illusion. Demons were understood as beings that manufactured appearances to confuse and mislead. A monk in his cell might see radiant light and hear beautiful voices, but he was to test it carefully, for demons disguise themselves as angels.

Evagrius Ponticus (c. 345–399), a Christian monk, ascetic, and theologian influential in early monastic spirituality, warned that demons insinuated themselves into thought, planting ideas that felt self-generated but in fact led one astray. This notion—that the demonic is most effective when it works through appearances—shaped the entire ascetic project. To resist demons meant to resist their illusions.

Augustine of Hippo (354–430) was a North African bishop and theologian whose writings shaped Western Christianity. In his book The City of God, he argued that pagan religion was largely a vast system of demonic deception. Demons, he argued, produced false miracles, manipulated dreams, and inspired performances in the theatre to ensnare the masses. They trafficked in spectacle, seducing imagination and desire rather than presenting truth.

AI chatbots function in a strikingly similar register. They do not exert power by physical coercion. Instead, they craft illusion. They can produce an authoritative-sounding essay full of falsehoods. They can create images of people doing something that never happened. They can provide companionship that leads to self-harm or even suicide. Like the demonic, the chatbot operates in the register of vision, sound, and thought. It produces appearances that persuade the senses while severing them from reality. The risk is not that the chatbot forces us, but that it deceives us—just like demonic powers.

Using AI chatbots, too, tempts us with illusions of pride. A writer may pass off AI-generated work as their own, for example. The danger here is not simply being deceived but becoming complicit in deception, using illusion to magnify ourselves. Early Christian theologians like Athansius, Evagrius and Augustine, warned that pride was the surest sign of demonic influence. To the extent that AI tempts us toward inflated images of ourselves, it participates in the same pattern.

When it comes to AI chatbots, we need a discipline of discernment—testing whether the images and texts bear the marks of truth or deception. Just as monks could not trust every appearance of light, we cannot trust every image or every confident paragraph produced by the chatbots. We need criteria of verification and communities of discernment to avoid mistaking illusion for reality.

Help is at hand.

Through the ages, Christians have responded to demonic illusions, not with naïve credulity nor blanket rejection of the sensory world, but through the hard work of discernment: testing appearances, cultivating disciplines of resistance, and orienting desire toward truth.

The Life of Antony describes how the monk confronted demonic illusions with ascetic discipline. When confronted by visions of treasure, Antony refused to be moved by desire. When assailed by apparitions, he remained in prayer. He tested visions by their effects: truthful visions produced humility, peace, and clarity, while demonic illusions provoked pride, disturbance, and confusion. We can cultivate a way of life that does the same. Resisting the illusions may require forms of asceticism: fasting from chatbots and cultivating patience in verification.

Chatbot illusions are not necessarily demonic in themselves. The key is whether the illusion points beyond itself toward truth and reality, or whether it traps us in deception.

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