Most of us really liked Happy Death Day
Happy Death Day
This is a tough one, I'm still trying to process what I saw. Happy Death Day is basically Groundhog Day re-imagined as a slasher film. The lead character "Tree" is a sorority sister who is murdered in an elaborate birthday themed murder only to have her wake up the next day.
Tree is an awful human being so you've got a number of possible murder suspects. As each death comes and goes she becomes a bit smarter and the suspects are eliminated one by one until we get to the final reveal.
As a horror film it was a bit lacking, knowing that she wakes up the next day takes a bit of the sting out of the murders which is unfortunate for a slasher. You also have a number of plot holes, contrivances, and the resolution leaves a bit to be desired.
Actually their are a number of maddening things that nitpickers are going to hate...like the romantic leads feel like they are ten years apart, you don't understand how that college exists and one of the sorority sister behaves and acts like she doesn't belong in the same sorority. But you can move past that because it's funny, it's actually really funny. There is a Ghostbusters/What About Bob style to the film including the best fart joke I've seen in years. You also find yourself engaged with the story, it's fast paced and Tree is a lot of fun if not somewhat inconsistent a character.[/quote]
Happy Death Day
(Christopher B. Landon)
Go Shawty, it's yur birfday.
50 Cent's In Da Club was in this trailer, slowed down to comedic effect. Unfortunately they couldn't secure the rights for the movie and had to change her ringtone. How did they get it for the trailer? I have no idea. I had more fun with this Groundhog Day inspired slasher film than I expected to. With a charismatic lead performance from relative newcomer Jessica Rothe, Happy Death Day manages to have fun in a tiredness of the classic repeating day troupe.
Tree is a sorority girl who manages to be a bitch to everyone. She is rude to a guy whose dorm room she wakes up in, the people she meets in the morning, her roommate and constantly ignores her father trying to call her on her birthday. Karma catches up to her when a masked figure stabs her to death. But wait, there's more!!!! Tree wakes up again, back in that dorm room. Things are eerily similar and she decides to take a different route from where she died last time. Yet that darn masked killer finds her and once again slices and dices. Rinse repeat. Now Tree must find out who her killer is and hopefully break this repeating cycle before the constant dying somehow ends up permanent.
Happy Death Day takes the slasher genre and mixes it with Groundhog Day. So it knows what it wants to be and it has fun with the subject matter. The director, Christopher B. Landon, has fun with the investigative aspects of Tree trying to solve her own murder. Eliminating suspects each time she dies. Plenty of room for comedy here and they make use of it. I would have appreciated a little bit more on the bloody side of things. This film is rated PG-13 and the lack of on screen gore really shows. Much like The Final Girls, Happy Death Day wants to pay homage to the 80's and 90's slasher genre, but feels crippled by the rating.
The identity of the killer was no surprise to me, films like this like to throw curveballs here and there and I found this one to be a little obvious. Story wise it made sense to me and worked well within the comedic aspects previously presented. Motifs are usually hit or miss, but here it could have been anything and it would work.
In most of these films it usually takes the lead character to change their personality from bad to good in order to break the loop. Tree takes this route too, but it mostly has to deal with finding and stopping her killer. Rothe makes the transition from bad to good believable and isn't afraid of making herself seem less desirable for a laugh. She is an attractive person and I feel like a lesser person who worries about their image wouldn't do the fart joke she does in the film, but here she is game and has fun with the material.
Happy Death Day surprised me with how much fun I had. It's nowhere near perfect and I could pinpoint a lot of problems, but the overall package is a neatly tied up one that I appreciated. The onscreen chemistry between Rothe and dorm boy Israel Broussard is believable and I wouldn't mind visiting these people again in a sequel. I feel like horror films as of late have been on an upward trend. I'm liking this.
I still regret that I missed
Happy Death Day (2017) when it was in theaters. There is a small, ****ty, non-AMC theater about 20 minutes away from me that I always wanted to go watch a horror movie at - and I wish
Happy Death Day could have been that movie. But, alas, I finally picked up a Redbox last night and popped it in.
Overall, I really enjoyed it. I feel the movie doesn't have enough fun with its concept, but since original slashers movies are a rarity these days, it's a horror movie that I went into less cynical than I usually am. Rating wise, I keep jumping back to back between a "3.0" or a "3.5" - so I'm just going to go with 3.0.
RATING:
I don't think anyones disliked it, it works the PG-13 horror well
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