Before I Fall
Directed by: Ry Russo-Young
Written by: Maria Maggenti
Starring: Zoey Deutch, Halston Sage, Logan Miller, Medalion Rahimi, Cynthy Wu, Elena Kampouris, Erica Tremblay, Liv Hewson, Kian Lawley, Jennifer Beals, Diego Boneta, Nicholas Lea
Drama/Mystery - 99 min Reviewed by Charlie Juhl on 3 Mar 2017
Written by: Maria Maggenti
Starring: Zoey Deutch, Halston Sage, Logan Miller, Medalion Rahimi, Cynthy Wu, Elena Kampouris, Erica Tremblay, Liv Hewson, Kian Lawley, Jennifer Beals, Diego Boneta, Nicholas Lea
Drama/Mystery - 99 min Reviewed by Charlie Juhl on 3 Mar 2017
When musicians cover a song another artist already wrote and recorded, the creator earns a standard percentage from the new version. Therefore, I hope Danny Rubin and the estate of Harold Ramis are due to receive a percentage of the Before I Fall receipts. Maria Maggenti, the screenwriter here, brazenly plagiarized Groundhog Day’s premise and replaced Bill Murray with a teenaged girl. Sure, Edge of Tomorrow committed the same sin, but it gets a high B on the originality scale while Before I Fall flunks out of high school.
Samantha Kingston (Zoey Deutch, Everybody Wants Some!!) is a stuck up, selfish high school senior who keeps waking up on her ‘lose her virginity’ day over and over gain. She only resorts to being nice to try and fix things as a last resort. First, it’s all a bad dream and then she opts for pissy and hostile, then boredom and depression, before realizing, hey, maybe trying not to torture the school victim or not yelling at her little sister may be the route to take. Samantha bookends the film talking to us in voiceover with, “Maybe you have a tomorrow, but for some of us, there is only today.” Well, looking at the house you wake up in and the atmosphere around you, your today is pretty damn well off.
Samantha Kingston (Zoey Deutch, Everybody Wants Some!!) is a stuck up, selfish high school senior who keeps waking up on her ‘lose her virginity’ day over and over gain. She only resorts to being nice to try and fix things as a last resort. First, it’s all a bad dream and then she opts for pissy and hostile, then boredom and depression, before realizing, hey, maybe trying not to torture the school victim or not yelling at her little sister may be the route to take. Samantha bookends the film talking to us in voiceover with, “Maybe you have a tomorrow, but for some of us, there is only today.” Well, looking at the house you wake up in and the atmosphere around you, your today is pretty damn well off.
Being part of the mean girl clique comes with certain benefits for Samantha. The Queen Bee, Lindsay (Halston Sage, Neighbors), chauffeurs the crew in her late model SUV and provides the morning coffee to boot. Since today is Cupid Day, Samantha is inundated with roses from not so secret admirers including a special one from the earnest boy who tries too hard, Kent (Logan Miller, A Dog's Purpose). Kent hosts the house party Samantha ends up at every night where horrible things happen which should be Samantha’s first clue that it is events at the party which need to change before she can achieve any type of closure.
However, Samantha is more preoccupied with losing her ‘v-card’ to Rob Cochran (Kian Lawley), a gentleman clearly marked to peak in high school. Also, everything is ‘bae’. If the clique of girls call everybody ‘bae’, then how does anybody know who anyone else is talking to? Samantha slowly transitions off of the Rob fantasy after a dozen or so groundhog days as the script lets on there is more to this shy guy Kent than meets the eye and perhaps the obligatory senior class lesbian has more interesting views on life than anyone in Samantha’s cloistered circle. This is a cue Samantha should start paying attention to the so-called school outcasts instead of the pampered select.
Yes, I am hostile to just about everything in Before I Fall. Based on a 2010 young adult novel by Lauren Oliver, its blatant theft of previous top notch material put me in a foul mood. Even the little tidbits got under my skin. Zoey Deutch and company are too old to play high schoolers; these are folks who in real life would be out of college by now and it shows. Samantha wakes up every morning to the same song alarm even if she died or not the previous day, sort of like Bill Murray waking up to Sonny and Cher. Before I Fall is set in some nameless area of the Pacific Northwest which director Ry Russo-Young does her best to mimic as Twilight country; a more than deliberate allusion.
Most of all, it irks me the protagonist is not the mean girl leader, but a follower. She is not the girl most in position to change things. Deep down, she’s probably not a very nice person either; check out how her mother slowly answers Samantha’s question on whether or not she thinks she’s a good person. The lighting got on my nerves. Is there no such thing as an overhead light in indoor spaces; must every room be lit by heavily shaded lamps strategically placed in corners? Even the outdoor shots appear to have a darkening filter on them to make it more gray and rainy. The sun magically comes out when Samantha has good days though. I assume some folks will latch on to this drivel because the high schoolers appear to have deeper problems than what to wear to prom, but that is misreading it. Before I Fall is a knock-off story with irritating characters who take forever to reach the enlightening notion that perhaps they don’t have to necessarily be assholes all the time.
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