Every Day

Waking up in someone else’s skin is usually the stuff of body-horror nightmares or wacky 80s comedies involving mystical fortune cookies, but for the entity known as "A," it’s just a Tuesday. Imagine the ultimate logistical nightmare: your alarm goes off, and you have to spend thirty seconds figuring out whose eyes you’re looking through, whose parents are yelling about breakfast, and where the heck the bathroom is. Now, try to maintain a committed relationship under those circumstances. Every Day takes this high-concept premise—borrowed from David Levithan’s popular YA novel—and tries to ground it in the messy, hormone-drenched reality of teenagehood.

I watched this while trying to assemble a flat-pack bookshelf from Sweden, and honestly, by the time the credits rolled, I had three leftover screws and a strange desire to be more empathetic to my neighbors. There’s something about the film’s earnestness that sneaks up on you, even if you’re usually allergic to the "star-crossed teens" subgenre.

The Consistently Inconsistent Boyfriend

The heavy lifting here falls squarely on Angourie Rice, who plays Rhiannon. You might recognize her as the sharp-witted daughter from The Nice Guys or the high school news anchor in the recent Spider-Man trilogy. She is the anchor of this entire production, and she has the unenviable task of building romantic chemistry with about a dozen different actors. One day she’s falling for Justice Smith (who brings a wonderful, jittery energy to the "Justin" version of A), the next it’s Lucas Jade Zumann, or Jacob Batalon, or Katie Douglas.

It’s a fascinating acting exercise to watch. Angourie Rice has to look at fifteen different faces and convince me she sees the same soul behind all of them. For the most part, she nails it. The movie effectively turns the "A" character into a metaphor for the fluid way Gen Z views identity. In the 2018 landscape, this felt less like a fantasy gimmick and more like a commentary on how we connect with people online or through avatars before we ever see their physical form. It’s basically Tinder for the soul, but without the questionable bios.

A High-Concept Indie Hustle

Despite its "big" supernatural hook, Every Day is a scrappy independent production at heart. Director Michael Sucsy and the crew had to stretch a $4.9 million budget—which, in Hollywood terms, is roughly the cost of the catering budget on a Marvel set—to make a film that feels expansive and polished. Because they couldn’t afford massive sets or CGI wizardry, the film relies on the naturalistic lighting of Rogier Stoffers and a very brisk shooting schedule.

The production was famously a "race against the clock," shot in just 25 days in and around Toronto. Because the protagonist changes bodies daily, the casting department had to find a small army of young actors who could all mimic the same soulful, observant "vibe" that defines A. It’s a bit of a "Who’s Who" of young talent from the late 2010s. Seeing Justice Smith right before his breakout in Pokémon Detective Pikachu is a treat, as he manages to convey the exhaustion of a person who has lived a thousand lives in sixteen years.

The screenplay by Jesse Andrews—who also gave us the wonderfully quirky Me and Earl and the Dying Girl—avoids the usual traps of being too saccharine. He understands that a teenager wouldn't just be amazed by this situation; they’d be terrified and frustrated by it. The film is at its best when it acknowledges that loving a ghost is actually kind of a drag.

Finding the Soul Beneath the Skin

What makes this film resonate in our current moment is how it handles the "A" entity’s lack of a fixed gender or race. In a different era, this story might have defaulted to a "boy meets girl" structure with a few magical hiccups. Here, A inhabits everyone: boys, girls, people of color, people with disabilities, the popular kids, and the outcasts. It forces Rhiannon—and the audience—to actually engage with the idea of loving someone regardless of the packaging.

That said, the movie does occasionally play it safe. It sticks mostly to "conventionally attractive" versions of A when the heavy romantic lifting needs to happen, which feels like a bit of a missed opportunity to really challenge the audience's biases. It’s a movie that wants to be radical but settles for being very, very sweet instead.

The ending also takes a surprisingly mature turn. Instead of a magical fix that lets them be together forever, it grapples with the reality of what "A" actually is. It asks whether love is enough to overcome the fact that one person simply cannot exist in the world the same way everyone else does. In an era of franchise dominance where every problem is solved by a glowing MacGuffin or a punch to the face, seeing a low-budget drama prioritize emotional logic over a "happily ever after" is refreshing.

Every Day is a gentle, perceptive piece of contemporary filmmaking that manages to make a ridiculous premise feel deeply human. It doesn't have the world-ending stakes of a blockbuster, but for Rhiannon and A, trying to find each other at a high school party is a mission just as vital. It’s a lovely "small" movie that benefits from a stellar lead performance and a script that actually respects its audience’s intelligence. If you can suspend your disbelief about the physics of a body-hopping spirit, you’ll find a story that’s remarkably grounded in the way we all try to be seen for who we really are.