What would you expect to see in a film about our generation? In her directorial debut  “The Fallout,” Megan Park spotlights what has arguably shaped Gen Z more than anything else: gun violence. The movie, which stars Maddie Ziegler and Jenna Ortega, was made to reflect our issues, our culture, and our voice.

“The Fallout” tells the story of high school student Vada (Jenna Ortega), who endures a school shooting. Self-labeled as a coming-of-age masterpiece in ads all over social media, the movie received immediate resistance from young people. Many asked, should our generation really be “defined” by a harrowing school shooting drama? I wondered the same.

I didn’t want to like it, honestly. And after the opening scene when Vada and her best friend Nick banged their heads to Juice WRLD in the car on the way to school and then joked about coming up for a code word for pooping in the school bathroom, I was officially a hater. Their cringey slang even prompted a, “do you and your friends really talk to each other like this? This is how I imagine it!” from my mom, who was watching with me. I responded “NO,” with disgust. However, it didn’t take me long to realize that they admittedly did sound like us. There may have been some cringey scenes and major over-usage of the word “low-key,” but the dialogue was pretty representative of teenage-terminology.

After the film’s first few minutes, I settled into an endearing and realistic scene between Vada and her little sister Amelia, who had just gotten her period for the first time. As Vada phones Amelia to give advice, gunshots ring out from in the school hallways. The scene becomes utterly horrifying. Vada hides in a bathroom stall with a classmate, Mia (Maddie Ziegler), as the two crouch over the toilet seat, shaking. The movie’s pinnacle scene is brief, and it depicts a devastating reality with care. In this moment, there is no focus on the shooter (who we never see) or graphic death.

From here on, we focus on the true costs of such events: the devastating impacts of lost loved ones and the trauma that a young person must grapple with after this experience.

After the shooting, Vada withdraws from those around her. She appears stone-cold, and the only one she cares to spend time with becomes Mia, a popular, “put-together” but misunderstood girl from her school with whom she took shelter during the shooting. The rest of the film chronicles their unlikely friendship, centering around Vada’s difficult and often exhausting attempts to move on. The movie feels like a day-by-day look into Vada’s life. And for the most part, it feels real.

Vada’s journey went a lot of places I didn’t expect it to. It depicted therapy sessions, a funeral and shared grief, triggering media coverage, parent-child support, drug use for coping, and an exploration of sexuality and teenage relationships. Additionally, we see Vada grow apart from Nick as he puts his grief toward action, founding an anti-gun violence organization. Nick is shown speaking to news outlets and rallying with classmates, and his character becomes strikingly similar to David Hogg, a student survivor of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas school shooting and lead voice of the March for Our Lives movement. It seemed Park wanted to represent as many authentic trauma-based responses as possible. It might not have been necessary to include such a broad spectrum in only 91 minutes, but I appreciate the careful and in-depth look at something that has yet to be explored in such a way through film.

By far the most touching storyline was Vada’s evolving relationship with her little sister. Only 13 years old, Amelia had no way of truly understanding Vada’s trauma. Instead, she appeared happy and carefree in the months that followed the shooting, aside from begging for attention and becoming increasingly frustrated with her sister’s withdrawal. Amelia’s innocent misunderstanding of Vada’s pain pervades the film subtly at times, until we reach a gut-wrenching scene where she expresses her own fear and guilt born from the tragedy and longs for the love and comfort of the big sister she admires.

As a student and a teen, I was naturally hyper-critical of a film catered toward me and my peers, covering the threat we face by simply attending school. Yet Park did a solid job depicting our generation’s attitude and culture: unity among the youth, the adolescent search for independence, and found activism. Park’s display of Gen Z was not only relatable to me, but it was also important for understanding the way grief affects our generation. No child should have to experience this—but they do. As the movie explores the devastation of school shootings in America, it also teaches viewers an important lesson: everyone copes in different ways, and a trauma such as this will stay with victims for the rest of their lives. Teenagers are in their formative years, and healing from such catastrophe is an unpredictable and arduous process. But this generation is united, compassionate, and brave.