Thoughts & Prayers

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1:34

Thoughts & Prayers

2025

1h 25m

Documentary

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9 Reviews

Popcornmeter

Fewer than 50 Ratings

This arresting yet sobering feature documentary captures the current landscape of safety rituals in schools and communities across America, where classrooms double as tactical training grounds, bullet-proof backpacks become armor, and conferences showcase the latest survival gadgets for a nation where mass shootings have become a part of everyday life. Equal parts absurd and unsettlingly real, the film traces the $3 billion active shooter preparedness industry and its effect on students and educators, raising important questions about the unintended consequences of these intense preparations. In the absence of meaningful prevention efforts and gun reform, how far will Americans go to prepare for active shooters?

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Robert Lloyd

Los Angeles Times

Nov 19

Thoughts & Prayers is most powerful when looking at or listening to the kids: 95% of American schools, we’re told, practice lockdown drills, which can begin as early as Pre-K

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David Ehrlich

IndieWire

Nov 19

B

Canepari and Dimmock’s film may present itself as a po-faced look at “how to survive an active shooter in America”, but make no mistake: This is a straight-faced comedy about the power of mass psychosis.

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Jacob Oller

AV Club

Nov 19

It’s objectively ridiculous and vulgar, and the filmmakers mostly allow the interview subjects to stew in their own damning words.

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John Stark

Mac the Movie Guy

Nov 28

80/100

Thoughts and Prayers preaches to the choir, as anyone with a dissenting opinion on the topic checked out years ago, and now likely has joined the booming industry around the thing we should be trying to eradicate.

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John Serba

Decider

Nov 24

Thoughts and Prayers is as disturbing and hard to watch as you’d expect. If it wasn’t, it wouldn’t be effective.

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Stephen Silver

The SS Ben Hecht

Nov 21

What the film is missing is a Michael Moore figure to occasionally pop up and get smug about all of this

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Ben N

@Bneffer Nov 26

The film focuses on immersing the viewer in the drama of a student or teacher faced with the concept of an active shooter. This is terrifying, and should be considered seriously, more so than the average person probably does and unlike many tragedies, and this one is 100% human caused. That said, I do not understand the point of this documentary. It takes 20-30 min of content and spreads it across a whole film, hyping the drama, and giving too much weight to those individuals subject to the most anxiety in the groups represented in the film.

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Matthew S.

@Tao_Haus Nov 22

Unwatchable. Sick of services like HBO spewing west coast talking points like this. Closest I’ve been to canceling HBO in a good while. I think Chernobyl was the last real home run.

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Chris E.

@OmniMan1776 Nov 20

Typical democrat talking points. Filled with lots of negativity towards religious values.

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Nov 20

Incredibly well done. Some of the ideas and methods pushed along by our 3 billion "keep kids safe" cash cow are as self serving and nonsensical as a drunk hunters justifications at allowing kids to die for the "God given right" to possess assault weapons. Thanks to these filmmakers for allowing some very stupid people to flail like idiots on camera in ham fisted attempts to avoid looking at the real gun problem in our sad nation.

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Dan H

Nov 20

I wish i could rate this 0 stars but for some reason it wont let me. The sounds of screaming children have been removed.. The fact that they have children smiling is disturbing.. We dont need a 3 million dollar industry teaching kids how to be prepared.. We need common sense gun reform to help alleviate the need for this industry

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Francis B.

@Francis17 Nov 19

This was an excellent documentary highlighting various ways that schools are attempting to keep their children and staff safe. Several different training styles were explored from equipment being used to staff and student hands-on training. Very well done documentary.

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Zackary Canepari

Director

Jessica Dimmock

Director

Thoughts & Prayers: Trailer

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Synopsis

This arresting yet sobering feature documentary captures the current landscape of safety rituals in schools and communities across America, where classrooms double as tactical training grounds, bullet-proof backpacks become armor, and conferences showcase the latest survival gadgets for a nation where mass shootings have become a part of everyday life. Equal parts absurd and unsettlingly real, the film traces the $3 billion active shooter preparedness industry and its effect on students and educators, raising important questions about the unintended consequences of these intense preparations. In the absence of meaningful prevention efforts and gun reform, how far will Americans go to prepare for active shooters?

Director: Zackary Canepari, Jessica Dimmock
Distributor: HBO
Genre: Documentary
Original Language: English
Release Date (Streaming): Nov 18, 2025
Runtime: 1h 25m

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