If you've dealt with any kind of trauma, you"ll understand where Vada is coming from. Vada is played by Jenna Ortega and can I just say that she is dominating the acting world, she is nonstop bringing out fire after fire performances. She does not disappoint in this film either, she will make you cry, she will make you relate to her and at times she will make you laugh. There is one scene I won't give too much detail because I don't want to give anything away where she takes something and her behavior while on what she took, it is just entertaining. I wanted to be best friends with this girl, she's an every person kind of character where I feel anyone can relate to her on some kind of level.
There is a school shooting, she is in the bathroom because of an incident with her sister and when the shooting happens, she is not alone. There's two other people who are with her, so she ends up developing a bond with these two characters on two different levels. Mia and Quinton are the two who are with her in the stall, waiting out the terror that they can only hear, only til they notice the blood on Quinton's shirt, making it feel even more real.
I like what this movie is trying to convey because the subject matter's a very delicate matter that was handled that way by this director. Megan Park, who's actually an actress herself most noted for the ABC Family's The Secret Life of the American Teenager, debuted as a writer and director for this film. I have to say her gentle touch on this subject was superb. She understood the way a teenager thinks, the way they speak, the way they interact, she was inside all of our heads.
Vada goes through a roller coaster of emotions like most of us do after dealing with something that our brains are trying to process and define. The point is, that we can't define everything, it's meant to just be taken one step at a time. I myself have learned that when going through a trauma, you have to allow yourself to FEEL, you can not bottle it in and that's one of the things that Vada learns in this movie, that keeping it in will keep you from healing. You'll never move forward if your mind is keeping you back, you have to push through it and feel every ounce of it, no matter how hard it gets.
Definitely re watchable because I enjoyed Jenna Ortega so much in this movie and Maddie Ziegler also had a stellar performance but overall, Jenna really shined in this one. Teaching us that being not okay is okay, that difficult times that wreck you to your very core, will in fact wreck you. But give yourself the time to build yourself back up, not as before, but you will get there in due time. I will leave you with a quote that I just made up myself, after someone I personally knew, was going through her own traumatic experience:
"Never force Recovery but also allow yourself to Recover".
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