Kim Snyder tells the story of a preventable tragedy that shocked the nation and altered the way a small community viewed their town. One day one man changed everything for 26 families. Kim Snyder never shows this man and never names this man. Even though the viewer never hears or sees this man, the viewer still can feel the darkness this man brought to this town. Snyder’s interviewees are shot against a black back drop. The black darkness is always there in the background lurking which matches the dark tone of the film. Then randomly through out the interview quick cuts to black suddenly startle the viewer, leaving them in a state of unsettled confusion. This technique simulates what happened to those families who lost loved ones. A sudden darkness came into their life and took everything from them in a brief moment, but just like the interview, their life kept going on. Snyder does a fantastic job with capturing that aspect of their lives. Living with the pain of that day. There is one woman who says that she now divides her life into two parts before that day and after that day. Snyder shows the viewer the brutal and buried part of this story, the human side. She takes the viewer into a very small distant town and shows the viewer an intimate side of gun violence grief. This is something that I have never seen or experienced and hope that I or anyone else in this nation has to experience.
