Home Room

Yup! There's a movie for everything!

This past Friday, I was a very busy girl. I was at my grandma's house helping her clean her front room and decorate for Christmas. In the midst of that, Grandma had the news on and we learned of a terrible travesty against humanity. A psychopath killed his mother and then went to a school and shot twenty children between the ages of six and seven and seven teachers... or was it eighteen children and nine teachers? ... or was it twenty-one children and six teachers?... or was it twenty children and six teachers?

The numbers kept changing and so did the information. It was ridiculous and it was one more chip in my ever-disappearing faith in humanity.

Since then, you turn on the news and you hear more about the Sandy Hook shootings or how they're planning on upping gun control laws. So the last thing you want to do is watch a movie about a school shooting, right?

Well, if you said "No, I really want to get more depressed about the world than I already am!" Have I got a movie for you!

Home Room is an independant film that was released in 2003. It stars Victor Garber (who once played Jesus in Godspell) and Busy Phillips (from Freaks and Geeks). I first saw the movie when I was in high school and decided that I liked independent films because they were different from normal. I was a weird kid and I wanted to watch movies that fit my tastes better. Popular films of the time didn't exactly appeal, so I turned to movies like May, Home Room, The Wolves of Kromer, and other weird movies that people probably would consider unwatchable. I regret enjoying some. I don't regret others. Home Room was one of those movies that really made an impact on my young psyche to the point that I actually own the DVD.

I only watch it when I need a good cry or something terrible happens and I have to deal with it in my own way. Basically, when my faith in humanity feels like it's falling apart, I put in Home Room and curl into a ball until I can believe that people are inherently good again.

What's it about?

Well, there's a school shooting at a high school. A high school kid goes into his home room and shoots his classmates. The police go in and one of them shoots him. When he's shot, there is only one person left in the room... besides the people he's already shot.  Her name is Alicia Browning (played by Phillips) and she's taken into police custody on account that everyone believes she was friends with the shooter. Det. Martin Van Zandt believes she may have known about the shooting in advance. She's the only person the police and town have to blame because the shooter killed his parents as well and stole the guns from said parents (sound familiar?).  Well, they can't hold Alicia forever and she's sent home. Through a series of events that leaves even me scratching my head, the school principle enlists Alicia to visit the only surviving student that was injured, Deanna Cartwright. The rest of the film is he two girls getting to know each other and work through their respective traumas while the police try to figure out why this happened.

The film is a major tearjerker. If movies make you cry, then expect to have a box of tissues with you the whole time.

Why do I like it? Because it does something that the news media will never do. It tells the truth in it's own fashion.

Why do these tragedies happen? The film doesn't give a reason. It doesn't give you the easy way out. It lists all the reasons that the media gives towards the end, but in the end the reason is clear: people die. People kill people sometimes. Shit happens. The end.

Will gun control laws help the problem? No. Because the people who do this sort of thing will just find a new way to do what they want to do. They'll make homemade bombs. They'll steal the guns from people who do own them (like their parents).

Will controlling violence in video games and movies help? No. Because people have been killing other since long before there was violent media like that available.

Some people are just sick. Sometimes the world just sucks, and letting the media point it's rotten finger at the nearest possible cause and say, "That'll solve everything!" is just dumb and ridiculous.

Last Friday, twenty-seven families were wrecked. The shooter's family included. His father and brother will never be the same because a stigma has been attached to their name. Twenty-six families have lost a member. Two other families have had a member injured. If the student census is right, 436 children have been traumatized. Why? There is no sane reason why! Children die! On the bright side, the authorities reacted with record time as they'd just changed the security protocol for this sort of thing that year.

Personally, President Obama's speech that day was very nice and pretty, but it didn't fix anything. This sort of thing can't be fixed. So, I'd really like people to stop trying to fix it, leave the families alone, and concentrate more on protecting and helping the victims. There are 436 traumatized children who are going to need a lot of psychological help after seeing/hearing their classmates die and then having cameras shoved in their faces. Can we allow the town to move on and maybe forget the killer's name while we're at it?

If you hadn't noticed, I already have. The victims, however, are:

Nancy Lanza, 52

Rachel D'Avino, 29

Dawn Lafferty Hochsprung, 47

Anne Marie Murphy, 52

Lauren Rousseau, 30

Mary Sherlach, 56

Victoria Soto, 27

Charlotte Bacon, 6

Daniel Barden, 7

Olivia Engel, 6

Josephine Gay, 7

Dylan Hockley, 6

Madeleine Hsu, 6

Catherine Hubbard, 6

Chase Kowalski, 7

Jesse Lewis, 6

Anna Maquez-Greene, 6

James Mattioli, 6

Grace McDonnell, 6

Emily Parker, 6

Jack Pinto, 6

Noah Pozner, 6

Caroline Previdi, 6

Jessica Rekos, 6

Avielle Richman, 6

Benjamin Wheeler, 6

Allison Wyatt, 6

Natalie Hammond, 40 (wounded)

1 Wounded Unnamed Adult