Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Fallout’ on HBO Max, a Drama Insightfully Tackling How Teens Cope with Trauma

HBO Max exclusive The Fallout is notable for two reasons: One, it addresses the school-shooting epidemic head-on, from a psychological and emotional standpoint. And two, it marks the emergence of a new filmmaker, Megan Park, who’s known for acting in TV’s The Secret Life of the American Teenager, and now shows significant promise as a writer and director. It stars Jenna Ortega (You, Yes Day) and Maddie Ziegler (Music, Spielberg’s West Side Story) as high-schoolers wrestling with their trauma – and further cements the film as a refreshing fountain of new talent.

THE FALLOUT: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Normal day: Vada (Ortega) brushes her teeth, rolls her eyes at her younger sister Amelia (Lumi Pollack), hops in the car with her best friend Nick (Will Ropp) and heads to school. She’s in the middle of an earth science lecture when Amelia texts her “911,” so Vada heads to the girls’ room and fields the call: Amelia just got her period. First time. Good thing she stole one of Vada’s tampons and stashed it in her purse. Vada’s annoyed at first – that isn’t much of an emergency, she tells her sister, but she soon softens, and if they were in the same room together, they’d surely mark this rite of passage with a hug.

Vada then walks into the restroom and sees Mia (Ziegler) touching up her makeup. Mia is a dancer and social media star with 82,000 followers on Instagram. They haven’t spoken to each other much before and Vada is in the middle of complimenting Mia, telling her she’s a natural beauty and really doesn’t need to wear makeup when the bangs echo from the hallway. They clamber into a stall and crouch on either side of the toilet to hide, trying and failing to stay quiet, Mia’s slip-on heels falling into the water. Another person comes into the restroom and they freak out and Mia’s hoop earring clatters to the floor, but it’s not the shooter, it’s Quinton. He squirms into the stall with them, gasping something about his brother, blood on his shirt. Is he shot? Quinton, that is? Even he isn’t sure.

The chaotic scene cuts to Vada, at home, lying in bed, glassy-eyed, in shock. Amelia and her parents (Julie Bowen and John Ortiz) don’t know what to do. They’re all reeling. Nobody says much, but they’re all surely envisioning how it happened and what could’ve happened, and why it happened and what now? That night, Vada texts Mia to see if she’s OK. They aren’t the type to hang out under normal circumstances – the girly-girl with rich parents and the middle-class sloppy-tee-and-retro-sneakers type – but these aren’t normal circumstances. Mia invites Vada over and they drink wine; Mia’s alone, because her parents are in Japan and, for unexplained reasons, haven’t immediately jetted home to be with her. They decide they should go to Quinton’s brother’s funeral together. It’s the first of eight.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: The Fallout finds a cozy tonal and thematic median between serious drama Never Rarely Sometimes Always (which addresses the realities young people face in the wake of current American politics) and spirited comedy Booksmart (which insightfully depicts teenage friendships). It also tackles the same subject matter as gripping conversation drama Mass, albeit from a different perspective. (Side note: Has anyone else noticed how Booksmart is slowly becoming a benchmark and reference point in modern film?)

Performance Worth Watching: Ortega goes raw without going overboard. What could have been cliches along Vada’s character path become earnest and real thanks to her commitment to the performance and a thorough understanding of its emotional beats.

Memorable Dialogue: Same trauma, different reactions:

Vada: Did you have the craziest nightmare last night?

Mia: You have to be able to sleep to have nightmares.

Sex and Skin: None.

Our Take: What is trauma, but being forced to change unexpectedly and against your will? Vada’s favorite term to describe herself is “low key,” and, even after living through a harrowing school shooting, she insists that’s still so, even when it’s obviously not. She lies and says it to her therapist (Shailene Woodley), when her parents stop walking on eggshells long enough to make an appointment – that’s one wall that needs to be broken down, just as one is built between her and Nick, who’s motivated to organize rallies and vigils in an attempt to change things. Vada finds camaraderie in Mia, because both feel the need to withdraw and medicate themselves; Mia quits dancing and takes up the option to homeschool. And Quinton brave-faces it, trying to stay upbeat; neither he nor Vada know what to do with the spark of attraction between them.

Park guides this messy variety of developments with an assured hand. She keeps the drama firmly rooted in the soil of authenticity while still finding moments of comedy – and no scene better marries the serious with the silly as when Vada takes ecstasy before class and ends up rolling down the steps, oh so slowly, her face stained with blue ink after she bit down too hard on her pen. It’s hardly “low key.” Even a shamelessly sentimental moment between Vada and her sister which might be an eyeroller in another film rings with truth; Park carefully modulates the material, and is too committed to an honest portrayal of her characters’ paths to ever be manipulative.

I use the phrase “character path” instead of character “arc” because there are no easy answers or tidy conclusions here. We know this horrible experience indelibly alters people, whether it’s those like Vada, immediately adjacent to tragedy, or empathetic souls who read the news, sign petitions and find their hearts aching from a distance. The Fallout avoids overt political angles, which some viewers will criticize as a willful blind spot, but the way in which the film depicts Vada’s experience is a crystal-clear portrait of how the personal becomes the political. Wisely, Park doesn’t pull any punches, bookending the movie with distressing moments, unblinkingly dramatizing harsh realities, but never falling into hopelessness. Everyone copes in different ways; the important thing is that they cope at all.

Our Call: STREAM IT. The Fallout is a smart, poignant film, distinct in the way it portrays teenage life in 2022.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com.