‘Downfalls High’ Is A Musical Movie Unlike Any Other You’ve Ever Seen
Samantha Colleran, January 2021
If you know me, you know that since its release in October I’ve been completely obsessed with Tickets To My Downfall, Machine Gun Kelly’s debut into the pop punk world. When MGK announced that he was creating a movie as an extension of the wonderful world of TTMD, I was thrilled. I wrote this review as soon as I finished watching it, and now that it’s officially done streaming, I’d love to share my thoughts with you. Without further ado, welcome to Downfalls High! *A lot of spoilers ahead, you’ve been warned!*
Shot over the course of four days, Downfalls High starts off pretty gruesome. We learn that our male lead, Fenix (Chase Hudson, Lil Huddy), cut off his ear at graduation and has been entered into a mental rehabilitation center. Flashback to eight months earlier and we see what led Fenix to cut off his ear. There’s the typical high school groups; cheerleaders, jocks, popular girls, loners. Fenix gets roped into a game of spin the bottle (played with a pink switchblade, because this is a MGK creation and why would there be an actual bottle?), with a few of the popular girls, including Scarlett, played by Sydney Sweeney. She takes a liking to him, and they end up dating after what seems to be a short time of knowing each other. He sees her as a reason to live his life and as a motivator to follow his dreams.
Unbeknownst to Fenix, Scarlett ends up getting pregnant. They get into an argument and Scarlett starts to distance herself from Fenix. They of course make up, and Scarlett buys Fenix a guitar that they were looking at in a music store earlier on in the movie. She covers it in pink duct tape and gives it to him as a gift. Scarlett asks if they could meet up later that night because she wants to tell him something. Fenix gets a call from one of Scarlett’s friends telling him that she got into a car crash and died on her way home.
Fenix confides in his closest friend, portrayed by Jimmy Bennett (who dropped out in the beginning of the film) that Scarlett wanted him to start a band, hence why she bought the guitar. So, that’s exactly what they do. Teaming up with a drummer friend of Jimmy’s, played by Landon Barker (who perfectly delivers the line “Damn bro, I’m better than Travis Barker”), the trio book a gig under the name Pink Switchblade and do rather well for a band that only just formed. Jimmy uploads one of their songs online after the show, and Fenix gets mad because he “didn’t want the world to hear” what he was singing. Despite that, Pink Switchblade goes viral and they decide to record more music.
During one of the final scenes, Fenix sees one of Scarlett’s friends holding her old purse. He takes it from her, and goes through it only to discover her journal where her final entry says that she was going to tell him that she was pregnant. (Plot twist… the fight wasn’t about her being pregnant!) The final scene shows the graduation mentioned in the beginning, where Fenix cuts off his ear, perhaps as a final act of love to Scarlett. It’s a twisted love story, sort of like Romeo and Juliet, or a Tarantino film.
I personally enjoyed Downfalls High a lot. It’s short (which is good for people like me who are really bad at watching movies), entertaining, and it brings Tickets To My Downfall to life in a new and unique way. It felt like a long music video with a full plot (MGK, Travis Barker, and other TTMD features sing in music video like setups in between and during scenes), and the overall aesthetic was cool. I definitely recommend checking it out if you get the chance, you can click here to watch it if you’re interested! If you watched it please let me know your thoughts in the comments as always! Congrats to MGK and everyone else who worked to bring this album and mini film to our computer screens!