Saving Zoë

Surprisingly excellent. Great performances that made the characters real, living people warts and all. Also a good mystery involving an ugly topic. Two thumbs up for teens up to 99.

The story combines familiar high school/ teen themes with much more serious elements of exploitation, crime and tragedy. Director Jeffrey Hunt gets very good performances from the Marano sisters ( a twist of the movie is sisters playing sisters) with a very good supporting cast. The most interesting aspect is the narrative technique : the story is gradually revealed using diary material, imagined events, flash-backs and some clever juxtaposition of the presence of the older and the younger sister. The most impressive aspects of the movie are technical with high standards from the Director of Photography, Production Designers and Editors.

Surprisingly good. Well acted and tight screenplay. There are some comparisons to "13 Reasons Why" - but for people who don't have the patience for such drawn out angst, this movie is a better alternative. The story is good and doesn't get too unbelievable. Liked the dramatic conclusion - quite feel good and makes sense. There are some heavy themes about drugs alcohol and sexual exploitation and worse. It's more of a thriller than the average preachy angst filled YA fiction.

Having 2 sisters Vanessa and Laura Marano act together makes the story believable. Vanessa from Switched at Birth looks pretty here. The other cast members are good too including the dope fiend friend who has the druggie look down. Nathaniel Buzolic is good as the bad guy - he should do more villains. Ken Jeong plays it non comical for a change.

Worth a watch.

I liked the movie, the story held up but something was missing. It felt like the actors were inexperienced or new to filming. Some scenes seemed and were stiff or emotionless in some way. If the actors were more experienced it would have been a 10

This movie takes you on a road to discovery to uncover why a teenager has died, which sounds familiar because it's the same exact plot as 13 reasons why but it replaces suicide with murder. The movie falls flat in trying to keep audiences' attention, and the graphic horrific scenes were not needed in the movie because viewers could have imagined the horrific video that was being watched by the protagonist (aka, Echo). The acting also fell flat which was a shame because it was such a dramatic film that you needed excellent acting to do justice to the script.