However, the "downfall" is inevitable. The film’s tragic midpoint—a death caused by reckless driving under the influence—shatters the glittering facade. Significantly, mtrjm does not moralize. There is no lesson learned. The surviving character does not find redemption; instead, they descend deeper into the chapter of blindness, numbing their grief with more parties, more noise, and more aestheticized sorrow. The film ends as it began: with a funeral, suggesting that the cycle will repeat with the next class of students. Fasl alany , then, is eternal. The chapter never closes; it only restarts. Released in January 2021, Downfalls High arrived at a moment of collective global blindness. The COVID-19 pandemic had severed traditional rites of passage. For teenagers, the "high school experience" had become a simulation. Mtrjm’s use of the term "fasl alany"—drawing on Arabic linguistic roots to imply both a physical blindness and a spiritual/emotional void—resonated with a globalized youth culture. The Arab-infused title (though the film is in English) suggests that this feeling of directionless excess is not exclusively Western. It is a universal condition of the post-2020 world: we see the downfall coming, yet we turn a blind eye (alany) because the alternative—sober reality—is unbearable.

Mtrjm emphasizes this through the film’s use of music. The tracks from Tickets to My Downfall are not used as background scores but as diegetic outbursts. When characters break into song, it is not the polished choreography of High School Musical ; rather, it is the desperate, off-key catharsis of people who have no other language for their pain. This is fasl alany as emotional blindness—the inability to articulate suffering except through performative rage. The characters scream the lyrics because they cannot see any other way out of their chapter. The title itself is a masterclass in the fasl alany theme. "Downfalls High" suggests an institution where failure is the curriculum. Mtrjm portrays the high school setting not as a place of learning, but as a purgatory of enforced optimism. The hallways are neon-lit; the parties are euphoric; the love is intense. This is the "blindness" (alany) of the first half of the film: the intoxicating belief that youth is eternal and consequences are for adults.

This visual "blindness" (alany) is achieved through excess. The viewer cannot focus on a single element because mtrjm constantly shifts perspective—from a high school musical number to a brutal fistfight, from a dream sequence to a funeral. This editing style replicates the cognitive dissonance of the digital age: we see everything, yet retain nothing. It is a deliberate sensory overload, forcing the audience into the same state of bewildered passivity as the characters. Mtrjm blinds us with style so that we feel the substance viscerally rather than intellectually. The conceptual core of fasl alany is the cyclical nature of self-destruction. The film is structured as a memory loop. It opens with the ending—a funeral—before rewinding to the beginning of the romance. Throughout the runtime, key scenes repeat with slight variations: a dance on a car, a shower of glitter, a scream into a void. This repetition is the "chapter" (fasl). The characters are blind to their fate; they believe they are writing a new story when, in fact, they are reenacting the same mistakes of the punk generations before them.

Introduction In the annals of pandemic-era entertainment, few projects captured the raw, unpolished angst of youth as effectively as Downfalls High (2021). Directed by the enigmatic collective known as mtrjm and produced as a long-form music video for Machine Gun Kelly’s pop-punk album Tickets to My Downfall , the film transcends the typical boundaries of a promotional tool. To analyze Downfalls High through the lens of mtrjm’s conceptual framework—specifically what critics and fans have termed “fasl alany” (فصل العنى)—is to understand the film not as a simple narrative of teenage rebellion, but as a deliberate ritual of disillusionment. “Fasl alany,” or “The Chapter of Blindness,” refers to a state of willful ignorance, sensory overload, and the performance of apathy that defines a generation caught between analog nostalgia and digital nihilism. This essay argues that Downfalls High is mtrjm’s cinematic manifesto of fasl alany : a high-fidelity, low-attention-span explosion of color, chaos, and cyclical tragedy designed to mirror the blindness of modern adolescence. The MTRJM Signature: Controlled Chaos Mtrjm (pronounced “mechanism”) emerged as a directing force known for their hyper-saturated, frenetic editing, and a deep affinity for Y2K and 90s grunge iconography. In Downfalls High , this aesthetic is the primary vehicle for fasl alany . The film follows Fenix (played by Sydney Sweeney) and her tumultuous relationship with a troubled boy (Machine Gun Kelly). However, linear plot is secondary to atmosphere. The screen is constantly assaulted with Dutch angles, grainy film stock, glitter, blood, and slow-motion tears.

The film’s costume design (plaid skirts, ripped fishnets, leather jackets) and its score (blending pop-punk with trap beats) further this hybrid identity. Mtrjm creates a world that is neither 1995 nor 2025, but a fasl (chapter) suspended in time. This temporal blindness—the inability to locate oneself in history—is the film’s greatest achievement. It is not a nostalgia piece; it is a ghost story about the present. Downfalls High (2021) is far more than a feature-length music video. Under the direction of mtrjm, it becomes a philosophical artifact of fasl alany —the chapter of blindness. Through aggressive editing, cyclical storytelling, and a rejection of traditional catharsis, the film captures the essence of a generation that performs its emotions in hyper-saturated color while remaining fundamentally unable to see itself clearly. The blindness is not a flaw in the film’s design; it is the entire point. Mtrjm does not offer a cure or a moral. Instead, they invite us to scream along to the soundtrack, throw glitter on our own failures, and accept that we are all students at Downfalls High, forever enrolled in the school of willful self-destruction. In doing so, they have created not just a film, but a ritual—one where the only way out is to close your eyes and dive headfirst into the chaos.