Young couples in movies are customarily given obstacles to overcome, but If I Stay seems unnecessarily cruel in its dramatic contrivances. Most of the film unfolds in the flashbacks that follow a terrible car accident; all the members of a family have been seriously injured, and our narrator, Mia (Chloë Grace Moretz), is in a coma. She’s also walking around the hospital as a sort of astral projection, looking down at her unconscious self and listening to everybody else talking about her. Mia’s a promising cellist, with a shot at attending Juilliard after she graduates from her Portland high school. The only problem is that that would take her away from her boyfriend Adam (Jamie Blackley), the lead singer of a neo-punk band, who plans to keep gigging around Oregon. Because who would want to take a punk band to New York City?