Following a school shooting, teenager Vada (Jenna Ortega) struggles to deal with the event.
Isolating from her family, she finds herself drawn to fellow survivor Mia (Maddie Ziegler), and anything that can help her evade her pain.
As time goes on, her tactics of distraction escalate…
I watched The Fallout without any prompting from real events. I had written bits and pieces of this review over a couple of months. I am always a little weary to toss out something if it is not in my wheelhouse.
I do not review a lot of dramas, or movies directly about social issues - I prefer more oblique takes (through a genre framework), or something more idiosyncratic.
Watching The Fallout was actually part of my homework for another review I am still working on, about the mockumentary The Dirties, which is a different take on school shootings.
Of the movies I watched around that piece, The Fallout stood out - in its sense of focus, on how this event affected a specific individual, and its empathy for this person, and the way it ripples out to affect those around them.
I had not heard of it before, and I was shocked it had come out so recently. Sadly, it remains relevant, particularly for an American viewer.
Outside of that context, it still works because it is so specifically focused on one person.
While the movie is anchored to Vada, the film pays special attention to how the event affects others. As Vada falls into depression, her best friend Nick (Will Ropp) ends up becoming an anti-gun campaigner.
And the film also takes pains to show the differences between the way Vada’s depression impacts her (she masks her feelings around everyone, which means people are not able to read her properly) compared with other survivors (Mia (Maddie Ziegler) hides in her house).
You cannot talk about this movie without talking about Jenna Ortega.
Ortega has gained a wider profile from her roles on Wednesday and various horror movies last year.
As the protagonist, this movie falls almost entirely on her shoulders.
Often this is literal - whole scenes are composed of close ups of her reactions, or shots favour her over whoever her scene partner.
Vada is introduced as a confident, smart kid - she is lazy and does not care about appearances; she cares for and supports her sister (talking her through her first period); she is not popular but she has a best friend.
Ortega’s performance is completely in tune with the film around her. Her withdrawn, quiet performance is never one note, and she masks the character’s despair with an animation and superficial excitement that do not feel too forced.
It is a minimalist, naturalistic performance that does not provide overt indicators for the viewer.
While Ortega is great, the other performer who stood out is Lumi Pollack, who plays her younger sister, Amelia.
You can see her distress every time Vada ignores her. She is aware of her sister’s pain, but cannot articulate what is happening.
It is a subtle, unmannered performance that captures the byzantine dynamic between siblings.
There is not a lot in terms of plot - this is a movie about capturing emotional states. There is change, but it is not an overt arc - the point is that recovering from trauma, and recognising and dealing with your mental health, is not a defined, clear progression. Change is small - if it happens.
While the film’s focus is internal, the film is tightly economic in its storytelling.
The school shooting is kept offscreen. The camera stays with Vada and Maddie in the bathroom stall. The focus is on the girls’ reactions to the sound of gunfire.
When Vada goes back to school, scenes play out as snippets with score: Vada has to walk through a metal detector; she has to watch a presentation on active shooter drills.
The sequence plays out like a memory, as the school’s response to the shooting forces Vada to relive her trauma.
This sequence climaxes at the end of the school day, when a noise triggers’ Vada and she soils herself.
It is not a public embarrassment - at least the film does not show if this incident had an audience - but she runs away and breaks down.
As she explodes, the film cuts to the next scene of the family having dinner.
The film does not end with a resolution of trauma - Vada learns to acknowledge and express it and reconnects with her family. But the film is not pat enough to treat that reconciliation as some kind of cure all, with an ending that shows Vada is still affected by her experience.
If an ending is a film’s final statement, The Fallout’s ending is probably the most satisfying. It does not try to solve trauma, or America’s obsession with guns. It is just honest about human beings, and how we live with it.
One of the great movies that was lost to streaming in 2021, The Fallout is the kind of small-scale human drama that deserves to be seen.
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