Director: Ry Russo-Young
Writer: Maria Maggenti (Screenplay) Lauren Oliver (Novel)
Starring: Zoey Deutch, Halston Sage, Logan Miller, Kian Lawley, Elena Kampouris, Cynthy Wu
Plot: February 12 is just another day in Sam’s charmed life, until it turns out to be her last. Stuck reliving her last day over one inexplicable week, Sam untangles the mystery around her death and discovers everything she’s losing.
There may be spoilers the rest of the review
Verdict: High School Never Ends
Story: Before I Fall starts as we meet Samantha (Deutch) one of the popular girls in high school, along with Lindsay (Sage), Ally (Wu) and Elody (Rahimi) as they live Samantha’s last day, yes, she tells us this in narration. We follow the day through high school where we see the girls act like they are better than everyone as Cupid Day goes by and the roses get passed around, but today is the day Samantha will be losing her virginity to school hunk Rob (Lawley) at a party.
When Samantha is involved in a car crash, she wakes up in her bed having to re-live cupid day, mostly confused she gets through the day watching the mistakes made. When Samantha learns that is wasn’t just déjà vu she starts to act differently through the day. Samantha continues to go through the same day witnesses’ new moments she tries to change.
Thoughts on Before I Fall
Characters/Performance – Samantha is the high school student that is one of the popular girls, she gets what she wants until the day she dies and must re-live the day over and over where she gets to learn about her mistakes. Lindsay is the full bitch and best friend of Samantha, she pushes Samantha into all the decisions knowing she is better than everyone else. Kent is the party host and secret admirer of Samantha. It is hard to care about these characters because they are so horrible to the others around them.
Performance wise, when you look at the performance you can look at who could be replaced, and the truth is you could swap out any of them because none of the make a big impact.
Story – The story tries to make us care about how one popular high school student gets a chance to re-live one day and learn to become more accepting of the students she is spending time around. The problem with this is by having this we get to see how people can only learn about how they treat people after re-living a day on repeat which shouldn’t be the message here it should be more about learning to treat people everyone the same everyday.
Mystery – The mystery is mostly why Samantha is going to have re-live this day over and over which we don’t get hints to about either, but the message is more important but late to the party.
Settings – We have all the traditional high school locations with the kids all living in massive houses with them all having successful parents that can by the big cars so they can act like they do.
Special Effects – We have limited effects in this film which are only used when needed and are mostly just a few stunts here and there.
Final Thoughts – This film has a strong message that gets completely sent the wrong way, we only get to live a day once, there is no other way of putting it, you do need to learn to treat the people fairly each day, the one day we get.
Overall: Miss-told story.
Rating
