Review of Before I Fall (2017) by Matt C — 08 Mar 2017

It's pretty rare for me to go into a movie knowing almost nothing about it, and Before I Fall now can nestle itself into that honorable bunch. After seeing this movie, it's not really much of a surprise that I had heard virtually nothing about this and hadn't seen a single ad or trailer since this is some generic, corny shit--some real sweet corn shit, albeit with a bit more spice to its direction than one would anticipate.

The issues with Before I Fall largely lie within the script and acting, as this is a movie with try-hard dialogue that sounds like it was written by dollar store Diablo Cody. The flat and aggressively unlikeable characters make for a bit of a confused moral of the story, and aside from Zoey Deutch in the lead role, the performances are kind of cringe-worthy.

Basically, know that it was produced by a company called Awesomeness Films. That's all you need to know. The movie is based on the young adult novel of the same name by Lauren Oliver and follows Sam Kingston (Deutch), a high school girl who spends her time with her appalling mean friends Lindsay, Ally, and Elody (Halston Sage, Cynthy Wu, and Medalion Rahimi, respectively).

She has a boyfriend named Rob (Kian Lawley) that she's about to finally have sex with while her nice childhood friend Kent (Logan Miller) crushes on her from the sidelines, and her little sister Izzy (Erica Tremblay, younger sister of Jacob from Room) bothers her at home.

On February 12, which everyone insists on calling Cupid's Day, she wakes up and soon finds out that she's in a time warp. The classic Groundhog Day situation is never really explained, but it's an excuse to have her realize how she should try to live her life as she shifts her worldview over the duration of the film.

It's not a novel concept, but it does allow for what could have been an interesting character arc. Unfortunately, this character is just a blank slate with the actor giving her all in terms of forced narration and changes in characterization that don't feel earned.

The characters and depth of the movie are fatal. Firstly, it makes no sense as to why Sam is best friends with the three girls that she's best friends with. She's kind of quiet, but they're cruel, loud, and outwardly aggressive towards anyone that isn't them.

I'm talking verbal abuse on top of public humiliation and physical bullying in public. Sam's allegiance to her boyfriend also doesn't make any sense; he's a SnapBack-wearing, sex-fueled fuckboy.

Maria Maggenti's script doesn't give him much screen time, though, and I often forgot that he existed. There are also peripheral characters that are one-note, and the movie doesn't bother to really set up its mythology--or what could possibly be called a mythology.

All of these things are instrumental in the protagonist's arc, but none of them make enough sense or carry enough weight to make an impact. They just feel like cogs in a machine called a script. The dialogue is truly horrendous for the first act, with forced references to social media and sprinklings--or more like carpet bombings--of slang and actions that feel like parodical teen behavior, but with no irony whatsoever.

Kids don't act like this. Especially not "kids" that are obviously in their 20s. It evens out more as the movie progresses in favor of total genericness as it veers into a bad version of Donnie Darko, so.

.. yay? Where I can't quite just discount Before I Fall are in some aspects of Ry Russo-Young's direction. There are some nice uses of lighting and colors, and the way that the movie stages repeated moments in slightly different ways is consistent but allows for a bit of creativity.

The shot composition is nice, and the synthy-techno score works well in a modest sense. Zoey Deutch is also trying really, really hard here, and she's cute and makes here character's decisions seem to make more sense than they really do.

In fact, her performance is a welcome distraction from the bad performances of almost everyone that she's surrounded by. Nonetheless, there are still a ton of times where I rolled my eyes at what I was watched because of how serious it took itself.

It's all under the illusion that it's saying something new when it really isn't at all, and the script is so bad that it doesn't even manage to make its lesson consistent. The casting of 20-somethings is distracting and it isn't like they were sacrificing appropriate ages for the sake of talent, and with the piled-on generic pop music soundtrack and attempts to seem in touch with how teens work, the real lesson of how to live your life turns out to be that you shouldn't see this movie.

3.9/10, really bad, D+, far below average, etc.