'The Fallout' gives necessary attention to ongoing tragedy
HBO Max
“Spontaneous,” my favorite movie of 2020, found originality and shattering impact in the story of teenagers who can randomly combust at any moment, a devastating reference to the unfair horror of mass shootings in high schools around the country. “The Fallout” takes a much more muted and direct approach to one of our worst national crises (one is too many) by looking at the confusion and sorrow and emotional ellipsis that comes from these deadly incidents. It’s a powerful exploration of brief terror converted into an open wound.
One moment Vada (Jenna Ortega of “You” and “Scream”) looks at Mia (Maddie Ziegler of Sia’s “Chandelier” video) and feels very far away from a near-stranger she only knows as popular and a dancer with a ton of Instagram followers. The next the two are hiding in a bathroom stall as they hear gunshots in the hallway of their high school. Written and directed by Megan Park, "The Fallout" examines several of Vada's relationships after this unimaginable yet all-too-common event: The tangible and intangible bond that now exists with Mia; the tension that emerges between Vada, who suffers nightmares and struggles to talk about her feelings with a therapist (a miscast Shailene Woodley), and her best friend Nick (Will Ropp), who becomes the school's most media-exposed voice for legislation and action preventing future violence; the distance created with her younger sister Amelia (Lumi Pollack), who feels responsible for Vada nearly being one of the victims; the fluid dynamic with Quinton (Niles Fitch), who joined Vada and Mia in the stall after his brother was shot; and the difficulty of support from even loving, engaged parents like Vada’s (Julie Bowen, John Ortiz). The performances are all strong, particularly Ortega and Ziegler, who excel at showing how their characters are more aligned than they might previously have thought.
“The Fallout” does a lot of things well, but one of the most striking is how its voice feels in line with the age of its main characters. Much of this somewhat minimal narrative exists in a state of shock and confusion, and the choices made and emotional instability experienced by Vada and Mia in particular are drawn with a keen eye toward being young and forced into a very grown-up situation. Credit to Park as well for focusing on the survivors and victims rather than the shooter, who is named once in the moment (Quinton tells the girls who it is when he arrives in the bathroom) but is otherwise hardly discussed. This is a movie about innocent people being the issue here, not those who favor gun rights over the right to live and go to school safely.
At times Park shows her inexperience, with a handful of moments playing out more awkwardly than they should because of writing and/or directing that has room to grow. (A reminder that it’s been 19 years since Gus Van Sant’s “Elephant,” with so many more than that murdered.) But “The Fallout” doesn’t exploit or wallow; rather, it has the courage to exist mostly in a state of purgatory, very far from the way things used to be, terrifyingly close to something awful happening again.
B
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