Canadian filmmaker Atom Egoyan has spent most of his career exploring themes of identity and perception, and he returns to this territory again in ADORATION. Simon (Devon Bostick) is a bright high-school student who lives with his uncle, Tom (Scott Speedman), following the death of his parents, Rachel (Rachel Blanchard) and Sami (Noam Jenkins). When Simon visits Rachel’s dying father, he learns that Sami may have killed himself and Rachel by deliberately crashing their car. In Simon’s high school, his French and drama teacher, Sabine (Arsinee Khanjian), reads a story about a terrorist who tried to blow up an airplane by planting a bomb in his girlfriend’s luggage. Simon claims the story is about his parents, telling the whole school that his father placed a bomb that failed to detonate in his mother’s carry-on. Sabine suddenly becomes close to Simon, while debate about his father’s actions lights up the school, with Egoyan carefully steering his film in several unexpected directions.

Egoyan is a master storyteller who knows exactly how to subtly manipulate the timeline of ADORATION to keep his audience on their toes. The truth behind the death of Simon’s parents slowly unravels as the film progresses, and the juxtaposition in values between Simon and Tom is thoroughly examined. Egoyan cleverly uses Simon’s obsession with Internet chatrooms to give insight into the escalation of interest in his false declaration about his parents’ past, but he is always painted as a sympathetic character whose fantasy life has toppled over into reality as he struggles to come to terms with a terrible tragedy. Bostick’s performance as Simon is exceptional and thoroughly convincing, and pushes ADORATION toward the heady heights of Egoyan’s best work in EXOTICA (1994) and THE SWEET HEREAFTER (1997).