The Fallout

The Fallout (2021) opens at the first minute of a school shooting and never shows it. Vada hides in a bathroom; we hear it and do not see it. The rest of the film belongs to afterwards: going back to school, being unable to talk to her family, the bond she forms with two people who hid in the same bathroom, and none of her coping methods working. That is the film's decision. It chooses the aftermath over the event and treats trauma as an ongoing state rather than a problem that gets solved. It is Megan Park's first feature and she wrote it too. Jenna Ortega plays Vada and it is counted among the turning points of her career. Maddie Ziegler, Niles Fitch, Julie Bowen and Shailene Woodley are in the cast. Finneas O'Connell composed the score. It premiered at SXSW on 17 March 2021 and won both the Grand Jury Award and the Audience Award. It went to HBO Max on 27 January 2022 and became the most watched streaming original in the United States that week. The final shot resolves nothing, deliberately. It runs 96 minutes. Good for: films about adolescence and trauma, quiet drama, and Jenna Ortega. Less good for: the subject is heavy and the film offers no consolation. There is drug use and self harm in it. Because the plot does not advance, some viewers find it static.