Image Groundhog Day, only you hate everyone.
spoilers
Before I Fall is the story of five total and complete losers, four psycho bitch mean girls and one pathetic emo girl. This is a time loop story, that like Groundhog Day, resets as each day begins again. Our ‘hero’ is one of the mean girls, a total bitch to everyone she knows. Her big plan for the day is to have sex with her boyfriend and end her time as a virgin. We follow her as she is mean to her sister, her mother, her father, and everyone else who happens to cross her path. The four mean girls are especially mean to the emo girl. They all end up at a party and everyone gives the emo girl the Carrie treatment by throwing their drinks on her.
The first day of the loop ends with all five of the girls dead. This is by far the best and most satisfying resolution to the story of these horrid people.
We never see any reason why we should care what happens to any of the girls. Our hero relives untold days, slowly changing from a cruel and heartless teenage to a loving and compassionate person. Her three evil friends, of course, never change from being cruel and evil. The emo girl never stops being emo. Our hero wants to save her, but we see no reason why she want to save her. She’s as much a loser as the other four girls, just in a different way.
We are told that things happened at some time in the past that set all of these events into action. But the time loop doesn’t stretch to that distant past, it just covers one day.
So here’s the worst thing about this very bad movie. Our hero, the only person who knows the day is repeating and the only person who changes and benefits from the knowledge of things changing, ends up being the only one of the losers who dies. Once she has changed and is no longer a loser. What. The. Hell.
In Groundhog Day, Phil the sexist weatherman, changes and goes forward into a new and better life. In Before I Fall, the hero dies and we can assume the mean girls will go on being mean and the emo girl will go on to kill herself later. Maybe the loop needed to run one more time and the new and improved mean girl could have done something other than wait til the last possible second to help.
Before I Fall was a downer of a film filled with people you don’t want to spend time with.
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