In "Art School Confidential," director Terry Zwigoff and graphic novelist/screenwriter Daniel Clowes examine American creativity and celebrity. There are no real surprises to be had for anyone who has been paying attention, but it is filtered through a perceptive lens that accepts no sacred cows and just comes out and says what needs to be said about a shallow system at best and a cancer to the soul at worst.

Art school is merely a convenient fish bowl for the creative world at large and Clowes views that strata as populated by maudlin, derivative fools who have created their own self-indulgent hell. Imagine a Hieronymus Bosch painting of the freshman class of a prestigious art school and that is pretty much what you will see in "Art School Confidential."

Young artist Jerome Platz (Max Minghella) believes his talent will make him famous, but his entry into art school reveals another reality where his meticulous-though-derivative skill just angers the anything goes art students who hate everything beyond their own narrow, supposedly experimental views. The ins and outs of this world are shown to Jerome by Bardo (Joel David Moore), an art school drifter who navigates between the cracks and has it all figured out. Much like one of Scrooge's ghosts, he leads Jerome on a journey of art careers past, present, and future, resulting in the loathsome circumstance of a failed, bitter, drunken artist (Jim Broadbent) whose bitterness may be destroying more than just his own soul.

Oppression is the central theme of art school. On the first day in school, the freshmen are told, "Only one in 100 of you will ever make a living as an artist." Of course, these are the words of an older man who has not made his living as an artist and is surrounded by young people who are seeking early superstardom — and some of them may just get it. Even those young people who may become superstars feel oppressed by the slightest criticism, reactionary and opposed to the idea of art as anything that requires mastery of skill.

For Jerome, the brighter side is represented by Audrey (Sophia Myles), the daughter of a famous artist and a nude model who stands less as the perfect woman and more as the shining prize to a glittering victory in the art career sweepstakes. At the same time, there is a killer loose, strangling art students and providing a paranoid backdrop, as well as a convenient story arc that is eventually utilized as a plot device driving the point home by the end. It assures us that there are no good guys here.

Though it's obvious that Clowes didn't have a good experience in art school — and that his attitude toward the gallery art world is far from friendly — he is not the Jim Broadbent character, far from it. Clowes walks the walk more than many, having made his name in the late 1980s in the alternative comic book world and parlaying his talent into not only screenwriting, but the world of best-selling graphic novels that have won him fans in both the art and literary worlds.

Clowes is a masterful illustrator and cartoonist — as well as writer — with an understanding of the grotesque within the normal. He can claim to be an out-of-the-box thinker in a world filled with people who want so badly to think beyond that deceptive cube. He realizes that the life of the artist often becomes so intertwined with the actual art being produced that skill — that is, art as discipline — is left out of the mix.

Zwigoff and Clowes examined similar issues in their grimly funny film "Ghost World," but there the issue was a far more abstract one. There was something in the air that was making the world wrong, formless and insidious. "Art School Confidential" stands as a thematic sequel to that film and follows what happens when that shapeless villain begins to take form within the structures we create, like a parasite that uses fame to spread to the rest of us. At heart, "Art School Confidential" is a horror film, a tale of zombies who eat your soul and then sip espresso and ramble on about subtext.