TEEN CAN NEVER SAY DIE

Sassy high school student experiences her own version of Groundhog Day

Samantha should have known something was amiss the moment someone brought up Sisyphus in her English class. In Greek mythology, this was the character doomed to repeat the same actions over and over again, pushing a rock up a hill only to have it roll back.

In these enlightened times, we call it Groundhog Day, and in recent years it has been used as a metaphor for addiction (Repeaters), played for laughs (that scene in Doctor Strange), driven romance (About Time) and has even made for great sciencefiction, in Edge of Tomorrow and especially Looper.

Sam’s Groundhog Day is actually Valentine’s Day — or more precisely, Cupid Day, which her high school celebrates on Friday, Feb. 12, with flowers given out to popular students, while others get to feel like Charlie Brown. She spends an average day at school before going to a house party where her best friends get in a fight with Juliet (Elena Kampouris), the class weirdo. Then, the car she’s in is side-swiped by a truck. Sam dies.

I can hear you thinking; well, that was a depressing 25-minute movie. But wait! Sam wakes up in her bed, on the morning of the 12th, and the whole thing repeats. The second time through the day, she’s half convinced the first was a dream. The next time, she tries making some changes. This time, someone else dies. But regardless, she keeps waking up on the same morning, over and over.

Before I Fall is, like everything these days, based on a 2010 young-adult novel. As such, Sam’s choices don’t have the same teleological underpinnings as Bill Murray’s in Groundhog Day, nor the existential importance of Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt in Edge of Tomorrow. Her idea of modifying the timeline includes being mean to her parents and wearing revealing clothes to school.

But within the frame of the film, there’s a lot for Sam (and young viewers) to chew on. Played with an appealing openness by Zoey Deutch, Sam is upper-middle-class in the school’s social ranks. She hangs with some popular girls,

Figuring out what really makes her classmates tick provides the spine of Sam’s journey.