The Fallout: A New Gen Z Coming of Age Story
Photo credit: IMDB
Disclaimer: Please read the trigger warnings for the movie before you watch it. Trigger warnings can be found here. May contain spoilers.
To be completely transparent, my expectations for “The Fallout” were disappointment and vindication. I expected that by the time the credits rolled, everyone on Letterboxd would be ripping the dialogue and mannerisms of the 16-year-old characters to shreds for not being accurate to how teenagers act today. However, through the direction of Megan Park and phenomenal performance by Jenna Ortega as the main character, Vada, I was left wiping my tears and remembering that not everything before the pandemic was better.
I remember the moment I learned that March 2020 was the first March without a school shooting in the U.S. It immediately brought back the pit in my stomach that typically grew during active shooter drills at my school. I was also reminded of the national school walk-out on April 20th, 2018 for both the 19th anniversary of the Columbine High School shooting and in response to the Marjory Stoneman Douglas shooting on Valentine’s Day that year. Watching the first couple minutes of “The Fallout” (2022) triggered the feelings of helplessness and despair that often bubbled to the surface whenever I heard about another school shooting.
A few minutes into the movie, viewers experience alongside our central characters Vada, Mia (“Dance Moms’” Maggie Ziegler), and Quinton (Niles Fitch), a school shooting. The three meet and are forever marked by their experience hiding in a bathroom stall and crying, hyperventilating and vomiting as they hear gunshots in the hall just outside the restroom. All of them process the event through a multitude of coping mechanisms, and are permanently changed. Vada and Mia grow closer through their shared numbness, Quinton mourns and confides in Vada. Additionally, Vada’s best friend Nick (Will Ropp) becomes a face of the movement against gun violence. The intimate character studies validate a large scope of responses to trauma, and how it is carried with us through the characters' connections to each other.
As Vada tells her therapist (Shailene Woodley), only six minutes can fuck up the rest of your life. The movie attempts to balance the weight of grief with processing Vada’s emotions, as well as moments that dared outside the tropes of coming of age films. Moments such as when Quinton comes over to Vada’s house, and when Vada and her dad yell at the top of a mountain trail make a difference in the plot, but the tones of them felt too cheesy to me. While I would love to yell about how fucking confusing life is with my own dad, it feels like it comes out of nowhere, given how Vada’s father doesn’t have much impact throughout any other parts of the film.
The moments where the film shined in my eyes were its depictions of mental health — it didn’t act like one day Vada would magically be able to go to school. The instance where Vada accidentally pees herself because of the trigger of stepping on a crushed soda can and the way the ending of the movie is handled portrayed the haunting repercussions and reality of school shootings. The film depicts how trauma stays with you, and while it becomes easier to manage, it can still have long term effects on a person.
I think many folks will also appreciate the way Vada’s sexuality is treated. No one ever tries to give her a label, Vada is allowed to be messy, unsure, and even scared when she finally acts on her desires. In my opinion, this is one of the better depictions of teen sexuality, especially compared to other teen coming of age movies like “Lady Bird''. Vada is allowed to explore and act without being rushed.
Aside from sexuality, another topic the movie covers is teen drug use, and I was extremely surprised with how the movie handled it. Vada is introduced to drugs which leads her on a path she probably wouldn’t have explored had the shooting not happened. The film both accurately portrays how a lot of teens use drugs as an escape from their mental health issues and how others react to it. I was honestly shocked at the maturity and care that was placed on how the other characters take Vada’s drug use.
“The opposite end of the pendulum from coping with drugs is the enormous amount of pressure put on Gen Z to ‘save the world’ through activism. ”
This is addressed well in the film through Vada’s best friend Nick. Feeling like you need to ‘do something’ with your trauma speaks to how trauma is often thought to be meant for some higher, productive goal. Personally, I feel like the expectation of Gen Z to enact so much social change leads many down the road of performative activism, in hopes that reposting enough Instagram infographics and posting a black square (as many did as a demonstration of solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement) will be able to fix systemic issues. Vada’s sentiment of how no one was meant to die hits so close to home, especially during the relentless loss of life to COVID-19.
My favorite scene, and what I consider to be one of the most heartbreaking ones in the film, is when Vada goes to her first funeral service for one of the victims of the shooting. She comes back to her gray tinted room and stores the funeral program in a wooden box on her dresser, then we see her in the same black dress, but then add a different funeral program to the box. This then becomes a time lapse of Vada in the same black dress, adding a funeral program for each victim of the school shooting. It's one of the scenes that seemed to haunt the rest of the movie, with the idea that any of the characters could have been a victim as well.
I hope to see Jenna Ortega in more films, and is going to play the titular role of Wednesday Addams in Tim Burton’s horror-comedy Netflix show “Wednesday” set to come out later this year. Her emotional range really added depth to Vada’s character, as well as her ability to say teen slang in a non-cringey way kept me engaged in the film. I am equally excited to see what the director, Megan Park, does next. Her ability to pace the story well and not inundate the audience with potentially triggering material was masterful. I hope that the global trauma of the COVID-19 pandemic is handled with the same care and artistry that “The Fallout” was, in hopes that something can be done with all our collective pain.
I hope that everyone who reads this far makes space to take in this film as soon as possible! Especially looking at all the collective pain Gen Z has had as an audience, I have come away from this film with a reminder that whatever way I choose to process traumatic events is okay. I also hope that all the viewers of the movie are reminded that it's okay to have messy, big feelings and that we do not need to just compartmentalize it and log onto the next zoom call we have. This movie brings a new light onto Gen Z experiences without being over the top or just aiming to be a buzzword cash grab at young audiences. I highly recommend you watch this movie on HBOMax, and let yourself feel all the immense emotions it may bring up.