IF I STAY REVIEW

My mom decided to call me up and go to a spontaneous movie, my choice. Unless it's on Netflix or some other (legal) internet form, I probably don't know it exists. I went to out local theatre website and watched all of the trailers for movies they offer and I narrowed it down to two movies: "If I Stay" and "This Is Where I Leave You" one sad and one funny. I would have rather the funny movie, with all of the sadness of the funeral earlier this week, but per my step-dad's request we, "got the chick-flick out of the way" so he wasn't sucked into watching it later.
Going into the movie, all I knew was that she dies and has an out-of-body experience. For all I knew she could have played jokes on her family as a ghost or something funny along those lines. Unfortunately, the movie did not pan out that way, but it would have been a funny take on it (parody movie in the making?).
The movie is a flashback type movie, starting with the most current part of the main character, Mia's life. The whole family either has a snowday or plays hooky from work to have a family day, to which they decide to take a drive, but the car slips on ice landing the whole family in the hospital and putting Mia in her alternative perspective. To be honest, I didn't even catch on the first few flashbacks... I was a tad confused. Once I figured it out and began piecing together the whole story, I was hooked and completely engaged. I found myself internally fighting for the relationship between Mia and Adam to grow into long term because they seemed like they balanced each others personalities well. SIDENOTE: I felt like I could relate to the character Mia. She was shy, reserved, enjoyed keeping to herself, and wasn't afraid to do what she loved despite that others thought she was weird or different for these characteristics.
At thehttps://feather2oakes.wordpress.com/wp-admin/post-new.php end of the film, I felt like the flashbacks of Mia and Adam's relationship in contrast to the relationship displayed between unconscious Mia and Adam was going to lead up to something huge once she decided to wake up or not. The film seemed to work towards this build up and then just ended it abruptly as soon and Mia opened her eyes, which leads me to be confused. I don't know if she actually lived or died.
It was a good film that got me easily hooked, but I feel like I missed some information, and now I want to read the book to hopefully get a better understanding. Right now I would rate this movie a 3/5 until I can understand it better (I'm just nerdy and need to research something before I become fully committed), but I would totally recommend this for a girls night out. It is definitely a good crying movie!!