Before I Fall (2017)

Before I Fall (2017)

IMDB Rating 7.0/10

 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 in danger of losing.

Director: Ry Russo-Young

Writer: Maria Maggenti (screenplay)

Stars: Zoey Deutch, Liv Hewson, Logan Miller

PG-13 | 1h 39min | Drama, Mystery

IMDB Link Here

Zoey Deutch plays a popular high-school girl who is compelled to live the same day over and over in this adaptation from director Ry Russo-Young of Lauren Oliver's YA novel.

Adapted from Lauren Oliver’s successful YA novel of the same name, helmer Ry Russo-Young’s fourth feature Before I Fall sees the indie director (Nobody Walks, You Wont Miss Me, Orphans) successfully transitioning to mainstream filmmaking. The story of a popular high school senior (Zoey Deutch, from Dirty Grandpa) caught in a time loop that forces her to relive a crucial day in her life over and over, this neatly written Heathers-meets-Groundhog Day high-concept package delivers both technical polish and a toothsome yet likeable cast. Better still, it has just enough tragic edge to draw young adults, and young-at-heart adults, with melancholy temperaments, a sizeable constituency judging by the popularity of dying teen stories. Returns ought to be solid when it opens in March.

Although it’s quite likely that many of the film’s younger viewers will never have heard of Groundhog Day and the like, Oliver, Russo-Young and screenwriter Maria Maggenti playfully tease viewers who might be aware of the time-loop device’s antecedents. It’s especially refreshing to see that like several other recent films that target young women (Frozen, for instance), the key to undoing the magic spell lies not in some “heteronormative” (to quote Liv Hewson’s feisty lesbian character) pair bonding between the heroine and the right boy, but in performing an act of sisterly empathy. 

Indeed, the film offers a pretty right-on moral lesson but without feeling preachy. Sam and her friends may be bullies, but they’re not cardboard hate figures, and backstories are deployed to explain why Lindsay in particular feels such a need to hurt others to hide her own vulnerability. Deutch, with her dainty features and soft eyes, presents a very sympathetic lead, and demonstrates range.

DP Michael Fimognari, well-versed in the ways of horror films after shooting the likes of Oculus and Ouija: Origin of Evil, deploys slightly cantered angles and eerie backlighting to create a sense of vague unease throughout without overdoing it. Editing by Joe Landauer is similarly on point, syncing up with low-key visual effects to briskly suggest that the cycle has gone round and round many times over.

Read Full review at Hollywood Reporter