The Fallout Doesn’t Understand How Teenagers Speak
Reading Time: < 1 minuteHBO’s new film The Fallout follows three teenagers who navigate grief and mental health struggles after witnessing a tragic school shooting together, creating a bond between the characters that is explored through the aftermath of the shooting. While the film successfully portrays the trauma that these characters feel with such an emotional plot, the script was particularly distracting due to the excessive use of “Gen Z” slang, making many of the conversations feel unnatural. One scene stood out to me in particular where Vada is talking with her therapist and uses phrases like “L O L” and “That shit is my vibe” in such a heavy conversation. While the film is one of the first to tackle the struggles of teenagers in the twenty-first century, they missed the mark on accurately representing how teenagers speak, and the over-use of this slang often reserved for the internet or sarcastic conversations seems to mock our generation.