Director Megan Park’s “The Fallout” isn’t for the faint of heart, but a film about a school shooting isn’t supposed to be lighthearted. The movie starts with an all-too-common stereotype used to set the Gen-Z teenager trope: iced lattes and awkwardly used slang. Despite the occasional cringeworthy millennial attempt at mastering the modern day teen, the image of two girls speeding down the road, blasting music with Starbucks in hand seems reminiscent of a Monday morning on Essex.

“The Fallout” follows the lives of high schoolers after a school shooting. The main character, Vada (Jenna Ortega), finds herself caught in the bathroom with Mia (Maddie Ziegler) and Quinton (Niles Fitch) when shots are fired within the school. The trauma’s fallout is immediate with Mia throwing up and Vada having a panic attack. Park deliberately chooses not to capitalize on the gore of the shooting, but instead focuses on the sounds and emotions of the trauma to convey the message. Hearing the shaky breathing of Ortega, seeing the fear in Ziegler’s eyes and the blood on Fitch’s hands as he clasps his face, hits the viewer right in the heart. As the plot develops, the relationship between these three characters becomes complicated, and the compounding of grief and adolescence creates a layered plot line.

This movie was able to capture teenage experiences, while staying true to the main message of gun violence awareness. “The Fallout” encapsulates this through the lens of losing yourself in the internet, coping with drug and alcohol use, struggling with sexual orientation and feeling brief moments of young freedom (Ziegler and Ortega’s characters floating in a pool with facemasks and blunts comes to mind). Park’s film avoids being preachy or over-the-top, with in-your-face high school cliches, like HBO’s “Euphoria.” Instead it has notes of the quintessential teen angst movie “Lady Bird ” with dramatic lighting changes and steady pacing. If you like films with emphasis on teenagers’ awkward experiences and slow-moving-plot lines such as “Beautiful Boy,” “Me and Earl and the Dying Girl” or “The Perks of Being a Wallflower,” then you’ve found a film for your next movie night.

I’m not saying this movie was a masterpiece that deserves “The Breakfast Club” status, but it does warrant recognition for the honesty within its approach to grief. Park captures the fallout of trauma without compromising the integrity of the message with forced romantic endings or cliché themes. It did exactly the opposite, conveying brokenness and the importance of change. “The Fallout” won’t be the best film you’ve ever seen, but will leave you thinking about gun violence and solutions for days after, something few filmmakers achieve.

Dynamite, excellent, fast, mean, smart high school movies

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