Three stars: ‘Before I Fall’ like ‘Groundhog Day’ for young adults

We meet Samantha on the morning of her school’s “Cupid Day”, one of those uniquely brutal high-school traditions in which the popular kids get roses and the losers get a reminder that young life is neither fair, pleasant nor near brief enough.

Playing out a single day with multiple variations creates both some amusing and serious moments the same way “Groundhog Day” did. Effectively, “Before I Fall” is little more than “Groundhog Day” with all the humor and charm swapped out for entitled teenage angst, and only one of the teens ever makes any changes. Based on Lauren Oliver’s popular young adult novel, it tells the story of high school senior Samantha Kingston (Zoey Deutch), who informs us right out of the gate that we are witnessing the last day of her life. Instead, we’ve got a film that’s taut enough, for what it is, and will more than likely appeal to its target demographic. Or the troubled Juliet, still smarting from an incident earlier in the girls’ shared past? Barely acknowledging her parents as she traverses their huge concrete-and-glass home, she’s her own proto-woman, heading into an assuredly fabulous future with little more than a parting glance at the past. A bad accident on their drive home seems to put an end to it all, but Samantha wakes up the next morning and…yep: Groundhog Day.

Instead, Sam and her friends pick on one girl in particular. Zoey Deutch has an appealing screen presence and carries the film in a tough role that requires Sam to approach each repeated day as a new challenge.

Of course, the choices are much easier in theory than in reality. Elena Kampouris effortlessly embodies the troubled and bullied teen Juliet, the victim of the group’s vicious verbal taunts, and it’s great to see Jennifer Beals in the role of “mom”. Played with an appealing openness by Zoey Deutch, Sam is upper-middle-class in the school’s social ranks.

Yes, much of “Before I Fall” will feel like a been-there-done-that exercise. It’s nearly as if Sam has seen a movie like this.

Deutch owes no one a reaction here; everything Samantha does is to fulfill her own promise.

But when the loner girl confronts her tormentors at the party, it all goes bad in a hurry. She isn’t accompanied on her supernatural journey by an angel – although one might argue that, by the time she’s learned the requisite lessons about life, love and kindness, the better angels of her nature have made their presence felt.

Sage’s Lindsay is such a fabulous villain that I wish the film was about her. For one, Sam never tries to convince anyone that she’s reliving the same day. Directed by Ry Russo-Young, from a screenplay by Maria Maggenti, based on the novel by Lauren Oliver. “It wasn’t hard to keep a lot of things the same because I thought they were a wonderful part of the story”, she said. “[I hoped] the things that stayed with me in the book would stay with me in the movie as well”. She attempts to make sense of what befell her and gain a better understanding of herself and others. As the girls make their trek to school, Russo-Young builds mood by borrowing from The Shining with slow-panning aerial shots of the snow-capped mountains in the distance and multiple gorgeous frames that track Lindsay’s SUV from the sky as it snakes up a winding road.

Over and over again, Before I Fall defies cliche when it comes to female friendship, and it’s a refreshing change of pace from teen movies in the past.