"These dark forces that take over people and make them murder are the extreme manifestation of fear and rage with which every human being has to do combat. The older you get, the more you'll know that a great deal of life is a struggle against everyone persons own smallness and fear and anger - and a continuing effort not to blame other people for our own shortcomings of our fears." Bill Clinton pauses and looks towards his audience. The faces of government officials, teachers, and Columbine High School students stare back at him. They and all of America will never forget the tragedy that occurred on April 20^th 1999. The event lives in infamy through the memories of its victims, the speeches of our leaders, and the media it inspired. Zero Day direct by Ben Coccio and Elephant directed by Gus Van Santare both films inspired by the events of Columbine. While each film takes different approaches towards depicting the shooters, the students, and the shooting itself, they both intertwine at the same theme: fear has the power to overshadow one’s understanding of the world around him.

Coccio and Sant both paint the shooters in their respective films in different manners; however, each director's illustration of the shooters overlap. In Zero Day the entire film is shot from the perspective of the shooters', Cal and Andre’s, own camera as they count down to the day they plan to attack their school, which they have dubbed “Zero Day”. Coccio's style of shooting was inspired by the video recordings of the Columbine shooters found after the massacre took place. Elephant, by contrast,is shot from the perspective of several students at the school using the typical low budget independent film style camera. Coccio’s Blair Witch Project style of shooting brings the audience closer into the minds of “the Army of Two” – Andre and Cal’s self proclamation. Andre and Cal’s lives are unraveled on their camcorder screen as they reveal to their audience the elaborate process of planning their shooting. While in Sant’s film, the shooters, Alex and Eric, get lost among the sea of characters the film focuses on. However, even though Coccio’s film’s focus is completely on Andre and Cal, Sant’s film explains the reasoning behind Alex and Eric’s actions in a clearer fashion. In Elephant, Alex and Eric are both shown being bullied relentlessly by their fellow peers. Alex’s first scene in the film is him getting spit balls thrown at him during Chemistry class as his teacher ignores his existence. Once their attack on the school begins, Eric confronts the principal, “…I want you to know this... and the next kids that come up to you with their problems... that they're being picked on, you should listen to them... no matter what twisted shit they say.” It becomes apparent to the viewer Alex and Eric’s motivations for their actions: their fear of endless torture at the hands of their fellow classmates had reached a boiling point. However, Cal and Andre’s motivations remain elusive. Coccio alludes to their bullying, when Cal and Andre egg a jock’s house, but it is never stated directly. They look at their attack on the school as a declaration against what the institution represents, “We officially, declare war.” Maybe the school represented the societal restrictions placed on people of their stature or maybe the school represented the two's inevitable separation in society. It is unclear; only Cal and Andre know the true reasons behind "Zero Day". By doing this, Coccio makes Cal and Andre’s case less sympathetic and creates a distance between the two main characters and the audience. Coccio even states, “I am trying to make them watchable, I in no way want to make someone who would do something like this necessarily sympathetic. That’s an impossible task anyway.” However, Sant manages to create two characters whose stories are painful and relatable to any victim of bullying as he brings this “impossible task” closer to reality in Elephant.

In both films, the students play an essential role in the story's progression. While Zero Day chooses to focus on the shooters, its last few minutes are shot from the security cameras of their school and the dialogue is heard via a cell phone of a student as the film reaches its denouement. This is the first time the audience sees the inside of the school and its inhabitants - the very last ten minutes. Each high school student is shot down as soon as "the Army of Two" catches sight of them - their presence evacuating the screen as soon as it filled it. As each shot is fired and each student falls, Andre and Cal's presence becomes more and more apparent as they become the soul standing figures on the screen. Coccio's purpose here is clear, the other students are simply props to further develop Andre and Cal. His film is not a chronicle of a high school shooting but an in depth look at the psyche of its perpetrators. In contrast, Sant's Elephant is a recollection of several students' day on which two other students decided to attack. All the students, including Alex and Eric, come together to cohesively blend into a picture of a random high school day. There is long-haired John, who looks like an laidback slacker, but in reality must manage a drunk father, photography enthusiast Elias, so focused on his passion he walks around school with just his camera and not a single folder or textbook, Michelle, who refuses to expose her legs in gym class by wearing shorts, Nathan and his girlfriend Carrie, the most popular and envied couple in the school, Jordan, Nicole, and Brittany, who squabble over the exact percentages of time they spend with their boyfriends as opposed to one another before throwing up lunch in unison in the school bathroom. With this plethora of characters, Sant draws his audience in with characters many can identify with, making his film more emotional and real as each character falls to gunfire; whereas, Coccio creates a separation with his lack of secondary characters, leaving his audience chilled and disturbed by the actions of the film's leads.

As both films reach their inevitable shooting scenes, Coccio and Sant depict each scene in distinct ways that leave their audiences in disarray. In Zero Day, the entire momentum of the film has been building up to this scene, the "Zero Day." As the perspective of the film changes, the audience finally sees "the Army of Two" in the third person - emphasizing the distance between the viewer and the characters that was not as apparent during first 80 minutes. Shooting at anyone they see, Andre and Cal eventually see law enforcement arriving in force after sixteen minutes of shooting. After arguing over whether to engage the police in gunfire, the pair decides to count to three and shoot themselves, "One, two, three-." Gun shots are fired. And with that the screen goes black. Sant's film shows Alex and Eric entering the school with guns around the 20 minute mark and then backtracks to the beginning of their day, as well as every other student's in the film. The last 10 minutes returns to this scene and the audience sees Alex and Eric enter the school this time and begin shooting indiscriminately, like "the Army of Two", even though they agreed to only shoot "dumbass jocks and shit." And one by one characters fall, the two gunmen separate. They reconvene at the cafeteria where Alex shoots Eric and leaves emotionlessly. Alex's sudden shooting of Eric emphasizes the hysteria of the scene and connects Alex's unstable psyche to that of "the Army of Two," who both have shown mental instability throughout their film. Alex then encounters Carrie and Nathan and tauntingly recites "Eeny, meeny, miny, moe" and the screen goes black. Both films end abruptly, the fear of Carrie and Nathan overtaking the screen in Elephant and the fear of Andre and Cal leaping from the security camera as they shoot each other in Zero Day.

While Zero Day takes to illustrating the shooters and Elephants takes to illustrating the school as a whole, both films illuminate fear as a power to obscure one's judgment. Sant emphasizes this fact in his depiction of several characters whose characteristics are reflective of the audience; whereas, Coccio stresses the same point by opening the mind of two disturbed boys and unraveling their downfall. And just as both screens fade to black, the message of both films spreads across the screen simultaneously - "the children of Columbine are never forgotten."