'Before I Fall' - Movie Review

Watching "Happy Death Day" earlier this week has put me on a "Groundhog Day" bender of sorts. "Happy Death Day" was the sorority girl slasher version, this is the teen bullying version.

Zoey Deutch plays Samantha Kingston, part of the pretty-girl clique at her high school. Her friends are fairly shallow and occasionally bitches (one in particular), and she herself is spineless enough to go along with their obnoxiousness. For her sins she's thrown into living one troublesome day over and over - as with the other two variants of the movie, it appears that she needs to "get it right."

I really didn't like Deutch - but in this case, it can be argued that that's because she's a damn good actress. She's playing a charming, spineless creature who has a moral compass but simply submerges it in the meaningless life she's chosen to live. Like Bill Murray's character in "Groundhog Day," she uses her endless supply of lives to find out who she really is and what she needs to do. Better than "Happy Death Day" (which wasn't bad), this one stretches for "Groundhog Day" and misses - but it tried hard and was an interesting watch.