By Erin Lynch ’18

When I heard Bella Thorne was starring in a movie about a girl who cannot go outside, the first thing I thought was: they are copying the plot of “Everything, Everything.”

“Midnight Sun” has a plot that centralizes around a girl who has xeroderma pigmentosum. This means that if exposed to the sun for excess amounts of time, essentially she dies.

Katie Price (Thorne), the main character, manages to fall in love despite her disease. Her love interest, Charlie, is played by Patrick Schwarzenegger. The two begin seeing each other solely at night due to Katie’s sensitivity to the sun. For a large portion of the film, Katie manages to keep her disease a secret. However, that does end up getting complicated.

While the two possess a cute and intriguing relationship, Katie’s relationship between her and best friend, Morgan, and, more importantly, her and her dad help bring some significance to the movie.

With a plot that is semi-predictable, the connection between these characters helps bring meaning into it. Katie’s dad and her live alone and, due to her disease, the two spend the majority of their time together. Katie’s doctor even says that she has never seen a teenage girl speak so admirably about her father.

It was the father-daughter relationship that caused me to tear up. The movie is undoubtedly sad, but I give them credit for trying to sprinkle humor into what would appear to be a fairly heart-wrenching plot.

Although I was initially intrigued by the story, the final product was poorly executed. The problem stemmed from the fact that Katie’s character has a passion for singing. A decent portion of the plot focuses on her coming out of her shell and performing in front of people. The problem with this is Bella Thorne can’t sing, but they had her do it anyway.

In modern day film making, it is common to have actors and actresses lip sync to the voice of a vocalist.. It put a damper on the film when Katie finally opened her mouth to sing and it was generally unpleasant. If the film was going to contain original songs like “Reaching,” “Burn So Bright” and “Where I Stand,” there should have been more of an emphasis on who was chosen to sing these songs.

While I was intrigued by the story, I would have to criticize its similarity to “Everything, Everything” and the underwhelming feeling it left me with. I would give the movie a two out of five stars.