YMMV / Zero Day

• Ho Yay: A lot between the two shooters.
• Misaimed Fandom: The aim of the directors being to make the two shooters seem like normal, even attractive teenage boys before violently whipping the rug from underneath the viewers at the final act has undoubtedly worked; in fandom tags romanticization/glorification of the shooters actions is rampant, alongside homoerotic shipping art and fanfiction between the boys. With the Newbie Boom mentioned down below, the film has become a sort-of gateway into true crime community spaces. In a way, it mirrors the cult following of the Columbine shooters that Andre and Cal were based upon.
• Moral Event Horizon: Quite obviously, the shooting spree itself.
• Newbie Boom: While talk of the film had been quietly floating around both indie movie and true crime fan spaces on site such as Tumblr since the late 2010s, a recent boom in the fandom (mostly of a younger-leaning demographic) has occurred on newer sites such as Twitter and TikTok since 2020.
• Values Resonance: While being clearly inspired by Columbine, the film itself pointedly resists most attempts to paint the shooters as bullied, uncool losers or give them a Freudian Excuse and instead portrays them as a pair of nihilistic bastards who look like normal teenagers, a perspective that became more mainstream after the Parkland shooting in 2018 (and many, many subsequent shootings in the mid-late 2010s). At the time the film was made, a shooter was much more likely to be regarded as a Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds. Even retroactive looks at Columbine nowadays focus on the killers' delinquency and Eric Harris' Nazi fixation while noting that they had multiple friends at the time.
• What Do You Mean, It's Not Symbolic?: Almost every scene is dripping with symbolism.
  • After explaining his desire to leave his (devastating) mark on the world before dying, Cal points out that the musical instrument he had been strumming the whole time is out of tune and has a broken string.
  • The depressing poem that Cal reads out at the poetry slam.
  • One of the most haunting scenes of the film shows Andre driving on the streets at night with his eyes closed, guided only by Cal's voice, laughing about how crazy it all is.

---