The Fallout Review: Growing Up With Gun Violence

The Fallout (2022)

Studio: Warner Bros. Pictures

Director: Megan Park

Release date: Janurary 27, 2022

Starring: Jenna Ortega; Maddie Ziegler; Julie Bowen; John Ortiz; Niles Fitch; Will Ropp; Shailene Woodley

Run time: 1 hour, 32 minutes

The desensitization of school shootings are so ingrained in the modern teen experience, a generation that grew up on active shooter drills and immediate exposure to news about Sandy Hook, Parkland, and more recently, Uvalde.

Megan Park’s film The Fallout combines a heavy subject matter centered around a school shooting through the honestly naive worldview of Gen-Z teens. What we get is a film that is as much a teen coming of age story as it is a harrowing commentary about the increasing frequency of gun violence in schools. 

There is no time to be wasted before the shots ring out, the story needing little set up and foreshadowing to explain why or how these events happen. But the film does not question the causes, it sheds a light on the effects with a delicate and sensitive brilliance. 

Starring Jenny Ortega and Maddy Ziegler as students Vada and Mia, the film follows these two peers as they cope with their shared trauma and survivor’s guilt. As the event is only audible as the girls hide in the bathroom stall within the first scenes of the movie, their fear is almost as difficult to sit through. The horror truly sets in when another student, Quinton, joins them in the bathroom in shock and covered in his brother’s blood. 

Though the unthinkable is occuring offscreen, we have more than enough information to comprehend the devastating familiarity of this type of tragedy. But that is just the first few moments, they still have full lives to live. 

In a sickeningly realistic way, the country reacts as it typically does. It’s a trending topic for a few days and then everybody moves on to the next.

The rest of the film quietly shadows the students as they struggle to adapt to their new reality, unable to handle normal teen life alongside their new trauma. As Vada tries to cope under the overbearing stress of her supportive and empathetic parents and younger sister, she begins to seek comfort with Mia. 

The two spend more and more time together as Vada’s other relationships with her friends and family begin to strain. They both just want to escape the world with a good night’s rest, something they can only get with one another. 

Jenny Ortega’s performance is stunningly subtle as she portrays the exhausting frustration of trying to move on without being able to take small steps. She may still be in shock, but her face does not change from the look of a worn-out child unable to process her grief. 

The film is quiet and gentle, filled with melancholy tunes and the occasional background noise of Vada’s sister’s TikTok and the mindless television used to shut out the rest of the world. 

Filled with dated, arguably cringey teenage dialogue, the movie leans more on the side of teen drama at times. It may even lean too close to blurring the line between typical teenage problems and real world issues surrounding gun violence and mental health. 

Perhaps this is intentional, as it emphasizes the saddening normalcy of gun violence in schools in our current culture and the simple scope of adolescent emotion. It’s almost an expected part of growing up in today’s world.

The quiet friendship turns into something more as the girls’ trauma bonding turns into them developing feelings for one another, and the teen drama is fully formed. 

Park could have easily taken this film in many generic directions like relying on tagic LGBTQ-drama stereotypes, hopeful commentary on how children are the future, a triumphant feat of teen rebellion, or twists and turns of dramatic irony. 

Instead the film becomes somewhat of a character study that follows a depressed and traumatized teenager, still going through the normal teen experiences just with an added layer of dread. 

The film steers clear of other typical conventions of teen dramas, though. It was a pleasant surprise that stereotypically quirky, misunderstanding, overbearing, or toxic parental figures were nowhere to be seen. 

Instead, Vada’s parents are just trying their best to help their daughter cope by not coming on too strong, while processing their own experience of nearly losing a child. It’s almost more frustrating that the relationship is strained in the film, as neither Vada nor her parents are doing anything wrong. 

As for her younger sister Amelia, who has been shut down or ignored for most of the film, she is unable to realize that she is not the problem.

Feeling responsible for Vada’s close proximity to the shooting as she left her classroom to speak with her sister, Amelia just wants forgiveness. This reminder that Vada is not alone in her grief is a stepping stone that gives her the courage to try and break the cycle. 

The slow emotional reconciliation with her friends and family by the end of the film was more than enough to spark the slightest bit of hope for Vada’s future, but it will still be a long journey from here. 

Just as things are starting to look better, the ending is just as horrifying as the beginning. As Vada is finally feeling able to healthily move on, her phone lights up as news of another school shooting breaks.

As a gut-punch back into reality, we are reminded that this girl is just another statistic in the never-ending media cycle surrounding America’s never-ending school shooting problem.

Though the impact can be managed, it will never fully disappear.