The Fallout (2021 | USA | 92 minutes | Megan Park)
Megan Park’s coming-of-age film starts like a typical high school day. We see Vada (Jenna Ortega) at home, getting ready for the day, cruising to school with her best friend (Will Ropp) sipping Starbucks and blasting Juice WRLD, and making their way through classes. And, when Vada leaves in the middle of a geology lecture to respond to an urgent text from her little sister, the day takes a dark turn that’s also increasingly common. A stop in the bathroom finds quiet bookish Vada and the school’s most popular “influencer” Mia (Maddie Ziegler, the dancer/actress previously best known for Dance Moms and Sia music videos) cowering in a stall as the horrifying sound of gunfire rings throughout the hallways. Aside from the blood on the shirt of a student who takes shelter in the restroom (Niles Fitch) Park doesn’t need to show the gory details of the massacre. It’s all too familiar and the young actors convey the terror and near-silent panic effectively.
While Vada’s friend immediately springs into activism, the film’s real interest is less in the motivations of perpetrators of mass violence or the sociopolitical factors that could be taken to prevent these killing sprees, but in the up-close effects on the survivors. Park conveys the burgeoning friendship between shell-shocked Vada, whose family seems paralyzed by an impulse to give her space, and Mia, left alone by jet-setting artist parents, as as nuanced and understated dance that plays out on social media. Instagram follows slip into direct messages, text messages bubble up across close-ups of anguished faces, slightly awkward first hangouts give way to sleepovers and falling asleep to each other’s FaceTiming laptops. Bonded by tragic serendipity, the unlikely pair find each other’s company among the few comforts in their anxious lives.
Despite the subject matter, the Fallout still hits the familiar beats of a coming of age drama: experiments with wine, weed, and facials; frustrations with parents (Julie Bowen, who knows her way around a Mom-sized goblet of Pinot Grigio) and hyper-chatty ultra-curious little sisters (Lumi Pollack, perfecting the tightrope of annoying and adorable); bad drug trips and sexual experimentation; and fallouts with old friends as social circles morph and interests diverge. All of this is well-played and layered over the additional complexity of coping with trauma — a mix of sessions with a hip therapist (Shailene Woodley!) vs. screaming into the void with Dad (John Ortiz).
Park and her talented cast navigate these highs and lows admirably, capturing the ways that kids and adults fumble their way through adolescence in general with specific sensitivities to the too familiar specter of gun violence. It’s emotionally riveting storytelling, told with assured visual presentation and set to a score by Finneas O’Connell (a.k.a. Billie Eilish’s brother), making it one of the better features I saw at SXSW. I was not at all surprised when it claimed top prizes from audiences and juries alike, but I just wish that the subject matter wasn’t so regularly topical.
The Fallout premiered at SXSW in the Narrative Features Competition where it won the Grand Jury Prize as well as the Audience Award. It will be released by Universal later this year. (Header image by Kristen Correll via SXSW)