'Thoughts & Prayers' examines shooter preparedness in the face of political apathy

“Thoughts & Prayers,” premiering Tuesday connected HBO, is simply a documentary movie astir the $3-billion “active shooter preparedness industry,” that abstraction wherever American nonaccomplishment meets American entrepreneurism. Though it approaches its taxable with a definite ceremonial neutrality, the title, a operation present synonymous with governmental emptiness, does suggest a constituent of view. (Its subtitle is “How to Survive an Active Shooter successful America.”)

That manufacture includes assorted forms of grooming involving teachers, students and archetypal responders and products theoretically created to summation information — locks, alarms, robot dogs, bulletproof backpacks, bulletproof solid and bulletproof shelters that beryllium successful the country of a classroom. One institution volition enactment an representation of your prime connected a bulletproof partition hanging and sells a “skateboard [that] volition outperform immoderate different skateboard connected the market, but it’s besides a aforesaid defence shield.” “Every clip there’s a tragedy, it economically benefits my family,” its laminitis admits. “We could beryllium a $300-million institution by the clip this documentary airs.”

One institution makes tourniquets “easy to use successful lawsuit of a wide casualty incident”; different specializes successful latex slug wounds for usage successful wide shooter drills: “the gunshot done and done to the cervix … the aggregate gunshot coiled to the abdomen.” One senses successful these endeavors a not insincere overreaction that substitutes for governmental action, shifting work onto imaginable victims and accepting the occupation arsenic intractable. (Or arsenic the Onion headline, published 38 times since 2014, has it, “No Way to Prevent This, Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens.”)

Directed by Zackary Canepari and Jessica Dimmock, it’s a bittersweet achromatic comedy, an Errol Morris benignant of subject, changeable successful an Errol Morris benignant of mode — formal, neutral. The cinematography, by Jarred Alterman, is rather handsome and composed, amplifying the seriousness and eeriness, but besides the banality and absurdity of the matter. Subjects look the camera caput on, sometimes to speak, sometimes to beryllium silently for a representation that mightiness find them covered successful fake humor and wounds from a role-playing exercise. The movie gets a batch of mileage conscionable settling connected faces, tracking reactions, oregon deficiency of reaction. The camera is static, steady; enactment moves successful and done the frame, sometimes successful dilatory motion, similar movie violence. This observational attack is regularly undercut, unfortunately, by a heavy-handed soundtrack that makes the movie consciousness little trustworthy. It’s an aesthetic and rhetorical failure, but not a fatal one.

The documentary states that 95% of American schoolhouse children signifier lockdown drills.

(HBO)

More than 20 cardinal adults person had progressive shooter training, learning however to support doors unopen oregon disarm a shooter, participating successful multiplayer video simulations. In Provo, Utah, teachers larn to shoot. (“Breathe successful done our nose, retired done your rima — fto each that hostility travel retired of you.”) But “Thoughts & Prayers” is astir almighty erstwhile looking astatine oregon listening to the kids: 95% of American schools, we’re told, signifier lockdown drills, which tin statesman arsenic aboriginal arsenic Pre-K (with “dinosaurs” substituted for gunmen, to, I don’t know, trim trauma).

The film’s past enactment follows a monolithic reenactment astatine a Medford, Ore., precocious school, wherever a “mass casualty drill” was scheduled aft a janitor turned himself into constabulary earlier acting connected homicidal thoughts. (They discovered galore weapons successful his home, and a written program of attack.) Kids, made up arsenic victims, litter the halls and gym field. Masked “shooters” spell country to room. The constabulary main gives, arsenic a motion connected the podium reads, a “fake property conference.”

“This is the reality, this is wherever we are successful this country, wherever we are successful this valley,” says the schoolhouse superintendent afterward. “But I bash not privation to suffer the information that it is inactive a bittersweet happening that we person to bash this. Still, you whitethorn wonderment what bully it volition really do, and anticipation not to find out.”

What passes for a weapon statement is relegated to immoderate warring soundbites from the level of Congress, and the sentiment of 1 trainer (named Thrasher) that guns aren’t the problem, but “family structures” and “the deficiency of tribalism.” But here’s Quinn, a precocious schoolhouse freshman from Long Island, N.Y., arsenic adjacent arsenic anyone present gets to addressing the issue. It’s worthy giving her the past word.

“I don’t deliberation that a batch of adults attraction astir our opinions. We spell done this each azygous day. We spell through, like, being acrophobic of going to schoolhouse due to the fact that we mightiness get shot, oregon we mightiness suffer a friend, oregon we mightiness suffer a teacher. And a batch of radical attraction astir their ... rights, I guess, much about, ‘Oh well, I privation to person the quality to ain a gun, and truthful I don’t attraction if you get changeable successful your class.’ It’s conscionable benignant of disheartening. ‘Cause it’s like, oh, you attraction much astir yourself than each of the students successful America.”