Evan is a Short Film that was put up on the Sandy Hook Promise YouTube channel.
The school year is coming to an end, and all seems pretty normal for a bored kid named Evan, who even writes "I am bored" on a table with a pencil. Someone responds to this message one day, and Evan starts to feel attracted to this mystery person, talking to her every day through these messages until they meet each other for the first time.
However, there's something happening behind the scenes, and once Evan's story ends, something shocking happens that nobody saw coming. The big twist makes it difficult to talk about this film without giving it away, so it will be unmarked. Read at your own risk.
Examples:
- Axes at School: The film ends with a student barging into the gym with a gun.
- Big Bad: The student plotting the school shooting.
- The Bully: Two teens can be seen harassing someone in the background while Evan is walking through the hallways. The kid they were bullying would later go on to shoot up his school, so it's possible that he targeted them.
- Bystander Syndrome: This is what the film is really about. While Evan's story is being shown, another student is planning a school shooting, and nobody noticed the signs. Had someone noticed what was going on and got him some help, maybe Evan's story would've ended happily.
- Decoy Protagonist: When you watch the short for the first time, you focus your attention on Evan and the girls he's watching, but it's only there so you won't pay attention to the loner kid whose passion for guns becomes more and more worrying.
- Downer Ending: Given what the film is truly all about, it should be no surprise when someone arrives at school with a gun.
- Dramatic Gun Cock: When the shooter enters the school, he cocks his gun, and everyone is alerted to his presence, finally making everyone realize that he's about to attack the school.
- Foreshadowing: If you're observant enough, you'll notice several signs foreshadowing the shooting that nobody ever noticed.
- First, you'll see the boy who would later commit the shooting reading a book about guns.
- The kid is also watching a YouTube video about guns.
- While Evan is walking through the school hallways, you can see the shooter being bullied in the background.
- One scene shows Evan in his room scrolling through Instagram, possibly trying to find the mystery girl communicating with him. As he scrolls through the uploads, you can see a picture of the shooter holding a gun with the message "See you at school". Too bad Evan didn't.
- One scene in a classroom shows the shooter making a gun gesture with his hand.
- Freeze-Frame Bonus: There are several signs hidden in the background that someone is up to no good, but with Evan's story in the front, you'll sometimes have to pause the video in order to see them.
- Happy Ending Override: As everyone is signing each other's yearbooks in the gym, Evan finally meets the mystery girl he's been communicating with for the first time, and it seems like the two could make a great couple. Then Evan's happy ending is forcefully taken away from him when someone shoots up the school.
- Headphones Equal Isolation: The boy planning the shooting wears headphones when he's not in class.
- Idiot Ball: Everyone failed to see the signs of what was about to happen. The first time you watch this short without knowing what to expect, you'll likely fail to notice them as well, and the film will point them out to you just in case.
- Meaningful Background Event: The entire point of the film is that while the focus was on Evan, another boy in the background was showing signs of shooting up his school that weren't noticed until he acted.
- The Nameless: Even seems to be the only character whose name is known. The closest we get to another character being named is the shooter's username being "Christo4k47".
- No Ending: The last shot of the film is of a guy with a gun about to kill people, and then it cuts to black before we can see him kill someone.
- Once More, with Clarity: Once the film ends, the video shows us several clips from the film, putting special emphasis on scenes in the background showing signs of what the shooter was about to do.
- Teens Are Monsters: Someone shoots up the school at the end of the film.
- Uncertain Doom: The film ends just as someone is about to start shooting people in his school, so we don't really know what happened to Evan, or the mystery girl. We also don't know what happened to the shooter at the end of his murder spree.
- Unusually Uninteresting Sight: The short is made so you won't pay attention to the boy while he's reading a magazine or watching a video about guns, retreating into his headphones or being bullied in the hallway. To emphasize how people seem to be desensitized to these signs, the "See you at school" post has 56 likes, and that's for the teenagers who didn't scroll it like Evan did.
- Wrong Genre Savvy: Evan is so caught up in his private life being a love story with the girl he's communicating with through messages, he never realized that he was in a PSA about school shootings and how they can be prevented when you pay attention to the little things around you.
