BEFORE I FALL
NOTE: This spoiler was submitted by Andrew
The film opens with Samantha (Zoey Deutch) narrating about life in general in an existential way. She talks about what her life was like before she fell. While doing this, the camera cuts to various characters doing different things in order to get ready in the morning. We then see Sam wake up in bed at around 6:30 (time is very important in this movie). As she gets up, she moves a small origami crane. When she goes downstairs, her family is preparing breakfast. Her younger sister Izzy (Erica Tremblay) asks if she liked the crane she made her. As she leaves, Izzy comes out with her gloves, and while Sam complains about her touching her stuff, she does tell Izzy to go back inside as it is cold out.
Lindsay (Halston Sage) is waiting outside by her car with coffee, and the two drive off to get Ally (Cynthy Wu) and Elody (Medalion Rahimi). Elody gives Sam a condom as tonight is the first time she will have sex. The girls enter the school and watch others prepare roses for cupid day (Valentine’s Day). During class, Mr. Daimler (Diego Boneta) talks about the myth of Sisyphus (the man who constantly pushed a boulder up a hill) when several girls come in with roses to deliver with one girl, Anna (Liv Hewson) complains she is in “Hetero-normative hell.” A girl hands Sam a rose, and it is different than the others in color and comments on how beautiful it is.
Kent (Logan Miller) comes over to Sam as she is walking in the hall and asks her if she like the different rose he got her. He then tells her that his mom’s out of town and he’s having a party and asks her if she’s coming, though she initially refuses. We then cut to lunch where the girls laugh as they discuss various people like Sam’s boyfriend Rob (Kian Lawley) and make fun of Anna’s breakup with her girlfriend and Juliet (Elena Kampouris) a loner girl who others assume is crazy based on how she looks and her drawings. The girls sent her a gag rose as a prank. Sam finds out that everyone is going to Kent’s party and decides to go. After school, the girls prepare for the party with Lindsay giving Sam advice about her first time.
At the party, Kent tries to get Sam’s attention, but she politely brushes him off. She accidentally bumps into Rob who is already drunk. The girls dance and have fun, and as the night goes on, Juliet shows up. Lindsay confronts her and Juliet lashes back at them. Lindsay pushes and throws beer at her and calls her names with everyone else joining in. Juliet leaves in tears and Kent comes to ask what’s wrong, disgusted when he learns what happened and that Sam was a part of it. He tells her that her boyfriend is throwing up in the kitchen. Lindsay is distraught and asks the others to leave, which they agree to do. As they are driving back from the party, it is clearly tense and awkward. When she asks what time it is, we see its 12:39. The car runs over something which startles the girls and causes them to miss a truck heading for them. There is a crash, and the car turns over in the woods.
We then cut back to Sam in her room, the same morning at the start. Her alarm goes off, and she stares around in disbelief. Izzy comes in to wake her, and when Sam says it’s Saturday, Izzy merely laughs. Thinking it was just a dream, Sam continues on her day as if nothing had happened, but is clearly freaked out by what had occurred and that things have happened almost the same way as in her “dream.” As the day continues, she is comforted by her friends and decides to relax and enjoy the party. The same events occur, and once they leave, she sees the time. She asks Lindsay to watch out for the truck, and when she asks what truck, the car is once again hit and tumbles over.
Sam once again wakes up to her alarm in her bed. Izzy once again comes in to wake her up, but she says she isn’t feeling too well. Her mom comes in to check on her and lets her go to school late. Sam is uneasy about what is going on, and as Kent walks up to her to give her the roses since she wasn’t in class, she speaks the same sentence at the same time as Kent. She goes to lunch and asks why they hate Juliet with Lindsay merely stating that she’s a freak. While the others want to go to the party, Sam convinces them to have a sleep over instead, thinking that this will stop the loop with Lindsay texting Rob that Sam can’t go because of her period and he understands.
As the night goes on, the time approaches once again. Worried about what will happen, Sam sighs in relief as the clock on her phone changes to 12:40 and claims that she loves her friends, while the others laugh it off. As the night goes on, they are awoken by text messages going off: Juliet has killed herself. Lindsay seems uncaring and angry while Ally and Elody decide to sleep in another room and deal with the news. Sam asks Lindsay about the news and how she’s feeling, but she doesn’t want to talk about it. Sam asks if she and Juliet were friends once, but Lindsay angrily avoids answering the question.
Sam wakes up the next day once again in her room. We see several different times her living the same day over and over again with her always waking up in the same place, narrating that she doesn’t know if she’s dead and if she’s gone to hell. Deciding that she is sick of having to relive the day over again with no change, she makes a drastic change and dresses in a more revealing outfit and getting into a fight with her family. On the way to school, when Elody tries to hand Sam a condom, she snaps at her. When confronted about her attitude, she yells at all her friends and gets into an argument with Lindsay who forces her to get out of the car and walk to school. She is cold and vicious to everyone in school, and when she gets up to throw the roses away, she asks if she excites Mr. Daimler. When Kent goes to talk to her in the hallway, he says that this isn’t her. Sam walks into the girl’s bathroom and talks with Anna. The two talk and bond over their devil may care attitudes with Anna telling her that high school is just a blip on the radar. When Sam asks if she felt like she’s reliving the same day over and over again, Anna replies with that that is her life.
Sam walks to Kent’s party and is met by Elody. She asks her to stop being who she’s not, saying that her friends are all she has. Sam talks to Lindsay, but that only ends in a fight with Sam storming off. When she sees Rob, they begin making out and start having sex. During the middle of it, she is upset, and Rob asks if saying I love you was what she wanted. She runs into a room crying, and Kent sees and comforts her. He takes her over to his bed, and they share a moment. His phone goes off, but she tells him not to answer as it will be too sad. They continue talking and have a heartfelt moment. She asks him to stay with her until she falls asleep and he agrees to.
The next day, as Sam realizes that not caring only made her feel worse and instead she spends the day in the woods with Izzy bonding. She gives her some advice and reveals that Lindsay used to make fun of her when she was Izzy’s age. That night, she is having dinner with her family at a restaurant. She and her mother talk and Sam apologizes for how she’s been. Her mom encourages her to go out with her friends even though Sam wants to stay in and watch a movie. Sam goes and once again ends up in Kent’s room where she and Kent reminisce over the time Sam hurt herself pretending to be a flying squirrel and the time Sam stood up for him after his dad died, with him claiming that’s when she became his hero, and the two share a kiss.
Upon hearing a commotion and realizing that it’s Juliet and Lindsay, Sam runs out to try and stop the fight but is too late and leaves in tears once again with Sam chasing after her. As Sam chases Juliet through the woods, they stop at the edge of a road. Juliet lashes out at Sam saying how horrible she and the others were, and how she and Lindsay use to be friends. She explains how she would stay with Lindsay during her parents’ divorce, and that it got so bad for her that Lindsay started wetting the bed, and that when they were kids during a class camping trip, Lindsay blamed her for wetting her sleeping bag. In tears, she runs to Lindsay’s oncoming car and is run over. Sam watches on in horror and realizes that Juliet was what/who they hit the first time. With this information, Sam prepares for one final same day, claiming that she knows what she has to do.
Once again Sam wakes up in her bed but is in a far better mood than before. She is polite to her parents and thanks her sister for getting her gloves. As she and the others get to school, she tells them why she loves each of them. Ally for her curiosity, Elody for her love, and Lindsay for her passion. She goes to the roses and writes things down on the notes, for Juliet she writes that it’s never too late and she writes to Kent that he’s her hero. In class she compliments Anna on her boots. At lunch, Sam breaks up with Rob who’s in disbelief, stating that he should have gone after Elody.
At the party, she stops Juliet from entering saying that she knows what she’s planning on doing. Sam admits to how horrible she’s been and Juliet runs off. Sam tries to run after her, but Kent grabs her arm. She says that he was the best kiss she ever had, but he is confused as they had never actually kissed (that was in a previous timeline). Sam runs through the woods and manages to catch up to Juliet trying to talk her out of doing what she is about to do. Juliet is adamant about committing suicide, and as she is about to jump into an oncoming truck, Sam pushes her out of the way and is hit by the truck instead of her.
Sam’s body lays lifeless on the road with Juliet over it trying to rouse it. Sam narrates that she is seeing only the good highlights of her life, her friends, Kent, and her family. Juliet comments that she saved her, while we see her spirit look at the scene and the voice-over commenting that Juliet was the one who saved Sam instead.
