Review: HBO's "Thoughts and Prayers"
The HBO original documentary examines the $3 billion active shooter preparedness industry in America and its effect on students and educators
By Kristen Mulrooney
I was an eighth grader in Massachusetts when the Columbine massacre happened. At the end of the school year, we had an assembly where they played a slideshow of yearbook photos taken over our three years at middle school. Our class of roughly 200 students sat in the dark, stifling auditorium laughing at the images projected on the big screen. I still remember the moment I realized I was sitting in the middle of a row and wouldn’t be able to make a quick escape if anything happened to us. It was the first time I’d had to think about it.
Since that day, I have been a teacher, I have married a teacher, and I have become a mother of three children. Active shooter drills have been my norm for a very long time. When I taught high school, students brought pillows, blankets, and headphones to school for drills. When we went into fake lockdown, I turned out the lights, locked the door, and the kids would get comfortable on the floor in a corner of the classroom and listen to music for as long as it took for someone to come around and jiggle all the door handles to make sure we were adequately shooter-proofed.
My youngest child was a couple months shy of her third birthday when she started attending our town’s public preschool. She participated in an active shooter drill for the first time at two years old. My kids come home from school and casually chat about the role they played in their ALICE drills. “I got to help barricade the door.”
My husband teaches middle school. His eighth graders were goofing around when they practiced the drills a couple weeks ago, and he had to have a serious talk with them. “I am a father. I have three little kids at home. When I am here, I am going to do everything I can to protect you. Please take this seriously.”
When I was given the chance to screen Thoughts and Prayers from filmmakers Zackary Canepari and Jessica Dimmock, I expected to be familiar with most of what it had to show me. But the documentary, airing November 18th on HBO, snapped me to attention within the first minute as it quietly revealed a facet of our mass shooting culture that I had never even thought about: the $3 billion “active shooter preparedness” industry.
I have a hard time discussing this topic, because it makes me angry and it’s difficult to put together an argument or a clear opinion when you’re angry. Canepari and Dimmock approach the topic with calm clarity, letting the conflict speak for itself. They move deftly between interviews with teenagers who have been raised to always be ready for the worst-case scenario, juxtaposed with pitches from active shooter preparedness specialists. The specialists and consultants are hungrily trying to profit off of safety courses and products meant to make us feel prepared for the mass shooting that feels almost inevitable at this point. One guy shows off his fake bullethole prosthetics meant to desensitize kids to the horrors our country shoves in their faces nearly every single day*.
See, it makes me angry.
During my last year as a high school English teacher, I was pregnant with my first child. One day, apropos of nothing, my sophomores informed me that if we went into lockdown, I should move immediately to the safest corner and they would take care of barricading the door. “Because you have the baby,” they explained, not understanding that they were the babies—fifteen- and sixteen-year-old babies who were not yet old enough to vote for their own rights to safety.
I hope people will watch this documentary and feel swindled by the people who are profiting off their endangerment. The shootings are endless, the casualties countless, and we can’t get enough people to care. If tragedy doesn’t speak to people, maybe money will.
*At the time of publication, it has been 1 day since our last mass shooting in the US. We’ve racked up 443 since January 1st.
By Lauren Ahmed
My little boy loves dinosaurs. That’s all I can think about. His third birthday party was dinosaur-themed, and when given a choice he always selects a dinosaur shirt. He plays, almost exclusively, at being a dinosaur after daycare. He will tumble through the door yelling “Rawrrr … I’m a dino!” and it delights me. Both my children delight me. They are perfect, irreplaceable humans for whom I would pay any price. In fact, I have paid, over and over again, a premium to give them the best I could afford.
As a parent in a dual-income family, daycare is a centerpiece decision for us. I researched it almost obsessively. We sat on a waitlist for our first choice for the better part of a year, during which our childcare was expensive and patchy. The extra stress, the waiting, and the uncertainties were all worth it to feel like the place where our children spend around 8 hours every weekday had everything we wanted: caring teachers, a solid curriculum, enrichment opportunities, appropriate class sizes, and more.
I also considered security. Most facilities address this upfront, and we all know why. Every mother I know, knows why. I obsessively examine the doors every day at drop-off. I wonder if the windows are reinforced, or if they ever prop open the exits when it’s warm outside. When my children offer to hold the door for a man entering behind us, I consider, upsettingly, if it’s better to tell them to slam it shut and force him to enter the code.
When we received the opportunity to view the new documentary Thoughts & Prayers from filmmakers Zackary Canepari and Jessica Dimmock, airing November 18 on HBO, we accepted on the basis that any project shining a light on school-based gun violence was worth our consideration as writers and mothers. The film, which examines the booming cottage industry that’s erupted around school shooting preparedness in the absence of policy action, shook me to my core. In a particularly affecting scene, a consultant tasked with creating age-appropriate lockdown drills for students around my son’s age talks about how, in order not to scare the smallest children, he tells them to imagine an angry dinosaur outside the door.
My son loves dinosaurs. He would run toward that, I think. He would want to see. I think about whether I should mention this to his teachers, that they should pick another animal, just in case they use that curriculum, and the very absurdity of the exercise hits me. There is no way to teach babies how to run, to stay quiet, and to hide. If the worst happens, I won’t be able to pay for a backpack, a robot, or a bandage that will guarantee my son’s safety. The trauma we inflict on our children, convinced it is necessary to prepare them if the worst happens, is a tragedy in and of itself which nevertheless does not exceed the devastating toll of school violence. Thoughts & Prayers is not an easy watch, but I believe it is a necessary one - a cultural corrective to a society which eagerly profits from and game-ifies violence while refusing to destroy it at the root. We shouldn’t look away.
Thoughts and Prayers premieres November 18, 2025 on HBO. https://www.hbomax.com/movies/thoughts-prayers/d5e6bc6a-db8f-46e9-ade7-71bf285dd886