The Fallout Movie Review: How Trauma Affects a Person

Recently, a new movie has been released onto various platforms. The film, The Fallout, speaks about a school shooting that occurs while students and staff members are on campus. Throughout the film we get to understand how it affects each student individually. This article will include a comparison of the movie to real events that occur in life. 

There are three protagonists of the film, Vada (Jenna Ortega), Mia (Maddie Ziegler), and Quintin (Niles Fitch). The trio weren’t friends before but throughout the film, they slowly got to know each other and became close. 

In the first 15 minutes of the movie, the two girls are shown to be in the restroom casually talking to each other. When out of nowhere, they hear gunshots on school grounds. The two are shocked and don’t necessarily understand what they heard. When it occurred again, the two ran into the stalls and hid. A few minutes later they hear someone run into the stall right next to them, which later climbed under and revealed to the girls that his clothing was all bloody. He proceeds to tell them that it was his brother’s blood.

The three later go home as the viewers get to witness how they’ve all been affected by the traumatizing event differently. Quintin watched his brother get shot and bleed out on him, the girls were alone unaware of what to do. They stay home for several weeks with growing fear and PTSD of the event. Mia and Vada start hanging out with each other more and more, coping with the trauma in various ways. Quintin and Vada also began hanging out with each other, to let each other know they’re there for each other.

Vada has a best friend, Nick (Will Ropp) who confidently steps up for a campaign about ending gun violence especially in schools. He appears to be careless as to how the event has affected his best friend, typically driving them to slowly end their friendship.

The Fallout does a good job showing the audience what happens to others when such events occur. Vada’s mother was scared for her child.  Who would want their child to experience something like this?

I interviewed a junior from Pitman, Sivianna Oushana about the subject

As you watched the film, was it hard for you to witness such a thing to happen to people within your age group?

“It was very hard watching this movie because although it was fiction, the school shootings are very real. Especially knowing something like this can happen, is very terrifying”.

Overall, the film does a good job on highlighting the traumatic experience that, like Sivianna said, sadly does occur in real life. The film manages to inform us about several different lessons.